MILIBAND the Elder must not, of course, count his chickens, but there’s no doubting the omens are good as far as his leadership bid is concerned.

A poll in yesterday’s Evening Standard suggests he’s comfortably beating his nearest rivals, at least among ordinary Labour voters.

Significantly, a new ComRes poll also suggests that more than half of the UK’s business leaders believe David poses the biggest threat to the coalition.

Now, this begs the question: how accurately will the actual results of the electoral college reflect the general view of the wider public? Well, if they don’t then they damn well should. The point of Tony Blair’s campaign to create a mass party in the 1990s was to make sure the party stayed in touch with the views of ordinary voters and not go off on irrelevant crusades, as it was wont to do in the 1980s.

And even though membership is well below the numbers reached at the start of Tony’s leadership, we are fundamentally a different party from that which saw every electoral defeat as a triumph of principle.

So I’m pretty confident that, come September, we’ll see the view of the general public reflected in the voting intentions of all three sections of the electoral college.

Incidentally, my own local party met last week to nominate a candidate. I was not present but I was delighted that DM won the nomination comfortably on the first ballot.