QUENTIN LETTS: Chuckling at his own brilliance, patronising the PM, Ed Miliband thinks he's running the whole show

Published: 17:42 EDT, 28 September 2026 | Updated: 19:39 EDT, 28 September 2026 Labour's conference steams onwards into the gathering storm, high on self-admiration, deaf to dangers.Day two, no one mentioned the price of diesel. Delegates did not speak of borrowing rates, hurtling skywards with inflation. Spending cuts? Not at the dinner table, please.It was Ed Miliband’s day. An unpromising slot mid-morning was all he needed to assert his superiority over Cabinet colleagues.Red Ed deployed all the oratorical tricks: squashed facial gestures to convey incredulity; scampering crescendos; bold pauses; and two enormous forefingers brandished like hotdog sausages, long and pink and bendy.He threw back his oblong head with its cantilevered fangs. The lips waggled like seaweed on a rock at high tide. Next he was furrowing his brow and pushing his eyebrows into a V. He reprised, once again, the story of how his refugee parents came to this country and made him a man of such virtue.Towards the end of a speech in which he claimed he would ‘mobilise the world’ against poor countries’ debt – he intended to persuade the World Bank to write off these vast sums – he was chuckling at his own brilliance. He hailed the ‘resilient idealism’ of his late mother and ascribed the same quality to himself. ‘Resilient idealism,’ he repeated, washing the expression round his mouth, tasting it. ‘I love that phrase.’While other mortals became more cynical with the years (or in your sketch-writer’s case simply more knackered and fatalistic and eager to escape the company of these deceitful maniacs), Ed found that he himself merely became more pure and idealistic. Eleven years ago he led Labour to unexpected defeat. A major factor in that election was Ed’s prattishness, writes Quentin LettsHe seemed to think it a good thing. But is it? A Foreign Secretary must eyeball the world’s tyrants and megalomaniacs. Would cynicism not be a better option? He performed with such hammy bombast that the audience leapt to its feet. Idealism is their catnip. It’s reality they can’t abide, a reality in which their first two years back in government have made the economy worse.Idealist Miliband was uninterested in that. He basted himself in the delicious hot grease of the crowd’s applause.Eleven years ago he led Labour to unexpected defeat. A major factor in that election was Ed’s prattishness. But now he thinks he is running the show.He said ‘how proud’ he was of Andy Burnham. This was said in a patronising manner, like Spike the bulldog in Tom and Jerry saying ‘that’s mah boy’. Wes Streeting, Defence Secretary, had spoken earlier. Mr Streeting was the Centrist option the party declined. A delegate made a little joke about Wes’s ambition. Mr Streeting ruefully remarked that, like the Navy’s newest sub, Agamemnon, ‘that ship has sailed’.Another of the morning’s speakers was the bearded Trade Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, who is back after a brief and tricky spell as Chief Whip. He noted that whereas some people used to say he looked like Prince William, now he looked more like George V. Both Reynolds and Streeting radiated an adult practicality that was lacking in Ed Miliband. Yet it is Miliband that the activists prefer in a vortex of puerile delusion that sucks us ever deeper into trouble.John Healey’s ‘big’ first conference speech as Chancellor was strikingly unspecific. He found a judicious pace and there was none of the mad honking we used to hear from Rachel Reeves. Jeepers, what damage she did.Mr Healey wore the same red tie he had lent to Gordon Brown to deliver his conference speech in Bournemouth in 1999 (Gordon, just off a transatlantic flight, had no other red tie to hand).The day’s other much-anticipated speech, from Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood on the subject of illegal immigration, went phutt.Rather than confront the activists she announced various new schemes for letting migrants into the country. Not so tough after all.As I left at the end of the day I swear I heard a ghostly orchestra strike up Archibald Joyce’s Songe d’Automne. Night was closing in and we were churning towards oblivion.