At the weekend a left-leaning colleague from another newspaper came home from holiday abroad and began asking his associates how Ed Miliband had come by his position on Syria. And no one could really tell him. It was a mystery. Somehow the Labour leader had ended up being the agent of Britain bowing out of any military response to the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime.
This colleague realised that last week’s vote was the biggest moment of Mr Milband’s leadership. It is the act that tells you more about him than anything else he has done.
In deciding to oppose the Government’s motion — which incorporated most of the caveats to action which Labour had previously asked for — Mr Miliband and