Prince Charming, Prince Charming: Nothing 2B Scared Of

Dave Osler explains who David Marquand is and takes apart the opinion piece he wrote. That was in yesterday's Guardian, here. Essentially the ex-Labour MP, ex-SDPer, ex-Compass founder member DM suggests that Cameron is a "Whig Imperialist" and therefore nothing to be scared of.

Perhaps from his other witterings that perhaps Marquand actually means "Whig Impiricist"? He is the only one using the Whig Imperialist category. But whatever. I think Marquand is projecting his own fantasy onto tabla rasa Cameron on this one. He almost says as much. There is no evidence I can think of for any of his analysis. Emperor Cam has no clothes. Marquand is throwing some over Cam's flabby underbelly to pimp his book.

Cam will do whatever it takes to get on the right side of the electorate.

Perhaps Boris for example is a Whig and Ken too ... but not Fox or Gove or Osborne or Duncan or even the freedom fighter Davis ... they're proper Cons the lot of them. And I really do think Cameron is one too.

Here however are two points we may agree with. Labour leadership change is not the answer. There is still time to turn and win:

Against that background, Labour talk of a leadership change is not just petty and mean-minded; it is sublimely irrelevant. The question that matters is whether it can retrieve the non-statist democratic republican strand in its heritage - exemplified by John Milton, John Stuart Mill, Tom Mann and RH Tawney - and abandon the heavyhanded, statist democratic collectivism that has been second nature to Labour governments since the 1920s. There is still time. Just.

David Marquand's Britain Since 1918: The Strange Career of British Democracy will be published on September 11