Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

David Miliband, who until quite recently used to be the next leader of the Labour Party, may be contemplating a career change. He has pitched some programme ideas to the BBC. What might these include? Perhaps the corporation could disinter The Generation Game and install the former Foreign Secretary as the successor to showbiz legends Bruce Forsyth, Larry Grayson and Jim Davidson.  Or, inspired by his brother’s economic policy, he could take over from where Terry Wogan and Les Dawson left off on Blankety Blank. Maybe he could form a comedy double act with Michael Portillo, another failed politician turned media luvvie. They might even come to rival the likes of Little and Large or the Krankies. That would be fan-dabi-dozi.

The recent furore over Billy Bragg and Burton Bradstock – which, in case you missed it, boiled down to a couple of right-wing nutters objecting to a left-wing singer-songwriter living in a large house overlooking the Dorset coast – has rather overshadowed his recent perspicacious remarks about the British National Party and Barking where the bard was born and brought up.

Billy Bragg says: “What happened in Barking was that Tony Blair thought ‘we can take the white working-class for granted’. Barking and Dagenham doesn’t really belong in the south-east of England, it’s a post-industrial town. But the people aren’t racist, no more than anywhere else. What they wanted was decent social housing, better hospitals, proper schools, decent jobs. They felt disaffected, disenfranchised and they had the BNP knocking on the door.”

Margaret Hodge, he thinks, was “absolutely complicit” in all that. Which was why the voters wanted to “send a message to New Labour – and it was those toe-rags [the BNP]”. Four years later, though, they understood that the BNP wasn’t “going to bring Henry Ford back to Dagenham” and kicked them out. Although Margaret Hodge is still there…