> Some truth to that but this runs a lot deeper than just the press choice for office I was not for a moment implying that the press are some kind of independent fourth estate, they work for the same people everyone else does. >The Labour parliamentary party almost to a man turned on him immediately. And they wouldn’t back down in their opposition to him even after the membership re-confirmed him as leader. I don’t know if it was the friends of Israel in Labour that organised such strong opposition, or whether it was just the Blairites as was claimed at the time, but I remember thinking it astonishing for a parliamentary party to so strongly oppose the choice of their membership (although Miliband throwing open the membership in the way he did obviously did leave Labour quite vulnerable to infiltration by momentum and the like). That's what I meant. The decision that he would not be elected was very obviously centrally decided. I would imagine that around the time he started becoming popular someone he didn't realise was very powerful indeed approached him and gently sounded him out on Israel. Despite all the hints and hand-holding he refused to be lead, so from that moment on he was marked for failure.