First Drafts - The Prospect magazine blog

An article in this weekend’s Guardian contains intriguing hints of what gets David Miliband’s goat. Explaining his decision to pen last week’s mini-manifesto, it claims: “Miliband himself was furious about an article in the Guardian by the shadow chancellor George Osborne earlier this month that he regarded as vacuous, adding to his sense that the Tories were not being challenged.” The article in question can only be a piece Osborne wrote a few weeks back in praise of Nudge, a much discussed book by two American academics. In the article Osborne claimed Nudge’s notion of libertarian paternalism for the right. He also argued his doing so showed evidence of the Convervative party’s openness to new ideas. This claim was seemed substantiated when Nudge author Richard Thaler noted that his ideas were receiving little play on the left. Feted by Osborne’s office and lauded by others in the Cameron project, he had received not one single invitation to break bread with government wonks. Thaler can now take heart. His ideas have, by proxy, nudged Miliband into action. If the result is the removal of Gordon Brown, his ideas may save the Labour party after all.