It’s a New Generation for Labour. That’s the message. But… but what does it mean? Is it Labour Jim, but not as we know it? Can you wrap your positronic matrix around the nuances of difference? Is Ed boldly going where no Labour leader has gone before?

This isn’t quite the Labour Party I’d imagined. Can a more soft, squishy, liberal Labour Party regain the working class support that cost it the last election? Can they be won back with economics alone, without the authoritarian thuggery of the past?

Questions questions…. but few answers as yet.

Gordon Brown, for all his faults, was a successful Labour leader. His uncompromising ability to manipulate, control and ride the power structures within the Labour Party not only led to his Coronation (that was David Miliband’s mistake, obviously, letting people have a choice), it also allowed him to survive repeated attempts to dislodge him. Brown’s weakness was that he couldn’t translate his mastery of the Labour Party into mastery of the British People.

Great news for us, obviously. Bad news for Brown.

Ironically many Labour members and supporters love a soft, squishy, caring leader – especially one that consults and empowers them. They’re not exactly keen on these Totalitarian dictator leaders themselves, for obvious reasons, but the more oppressed, silenced and ignored they are, the better chance their leaders have of getting into power. It’s a mighty pickle, alright. That’s, perhaps, why they voted more for David. I mean, David, if nothing else, looks like he’s probably a mean, cynical bastard behind closed doors and perfectly capable of keeping Labour under control.

It’s not surprising that typical dreams of an incredible grassroots progressive movement amount to, in reality, “lots and lots of teenagers and students delivering leaflets and giving us money.”  Loyalty! Unity! Solidarity! These are all buzzwords for shut your mouth, do what you’re told and stop fucking things up for ‘everyone else’. That’s what Brown achieved (if not the ‘incredible grassroots movement’ part of the deal). He got everyone singing from the same book and everyone knew who was Boss Of Labour.

But, lo, it came to pass that Labour (well, the Unions) elected someone who, despite his Red Ed epitaph, is no wannabe Stalin. He’s cuddly. He’s soft. He cares about what you think and wants to nurture you into a squishy world of love and puppies.

The Labour Party is going to eat him alive. My prediction is that he’s not got the authority or the power to hold Labour together. Factions are going to start openly fighting with each other because, for the first time since the era of the TB-GBs, there’s no Clunking Fist keeping their more embarrassing and electorally disastrous tendencies in check.

Of course, I’d love to be wrong… but Socialism is a game for fearless ruthless hard-men with a book of “favours owed” and “secrets known”, not fresh faced newbies with hearts of gold and brains of putty.

So Ed Miliband, the Agent Of Change, has emerged triumphant. He inherits a party in Opposition at the “Tories cleaning up the mess” phase of the Labour Power Cycle and very happy about this he will be.

The calculation – that after 5 years the deficit will be fixed and, at this point, there will be no excuse for further cuts, he’ll be able to argue that the Tories and Lib Dems are a bunch of bastards and that the public should vote for him so that he can grant public sector workers more money.

I heard the news in the company of a “wannabe” Labour member who is thrilled with this news. I am too. Lovely!

Politics, let’s face it, brings out the worst in people. It certainly brings out the worst in me. Watching the Labour Leadership contest unfold has had me rubbing my hands together in barely concealed glee muttering “mu ha ha ha!” I can be open minded and non-partisan about just about anything… except Labour.

I don’t, if I’m honest, wish them well. If its members were to find themselves accidentally eaten by marauding rabid gerbils, I would not shed a tear. So, at 4am this morning, Mike Smithson of Political Betting decided to announce that he’s calling it for Ed Miliband and I felt quite relaxed and happy about that.

Allow me to explain:

See, Progressivism is about selling fantastic dreams  - work less, earn more, play more, become more attractive, be more admired by your peers, end hunger, end poverty, create world peace, abolish cancer, save the whales, save the planet all by simply voting once every few years and telling people, hey, I voted for cool. Musicians, actors, comedians… all manner of people who depend on being ‘in’ and ‘hip’ to make a living align themselves with progressive politics. Cos it’s cool. It’s one giant circle-jerk of ‘cool’.

That is, of course, only when the Progressive movement is led by someone cool superstar politicians – Clinton, Blair, Obama – then the circle-jerk actually works.

However when the leader is someone lacking in cool – Gore (the less charismatic and distinctly more bonkers Gore), Kerry or Gordon Brown – then there is no circle of cool, the Progressive Party languishes in failure and defeat. It’s not that people vote for Centre Right parties instead – they clearly don’t, because, after all, if you’re voting for cool then you’re not going to get that from the Conservatives or the Republicans – but they do stay at home instead, preferring to spend polling day listening to the hottest new band with their latest single, “Rupert Murdoch gave me AIDS”.

Selling Progressive dreams is a job for expert salesmen and saleswomen and so, to the point of this post, Ed Miliband is no cool superstar politician and so fantastic news for those who wish Labour… ill. He’s got a sort of cuddly, bubblegum innocence about him with his strangely nasal voice and chinless, feminine face which doesn’t really inspire the sort of feelings of terror and loathing that a winning Progressive Leader should inspire in someone like me. I only fear the ones that have a realistic chance of actually running the country.

But then, none of the others seem to have the mysterious X factor either. There’s no British Obama here, and for David Miliband the apple has fallen a long, long, long way from Blair’s tree.  It’s all so ho-hum.

I suppose the question is, am I right? Is it impossible for a Progressive party to win power without a political superstar leader? I put this same argument when Gordon Brown first became leader, stressing my belief that Gordon should never be able to win an election no matter what he did or said because he’s the wrong kind of leader for Progressives, and I was told by various cool people how wrong I was, that politics can’t be reduced to a simple question of teeth and hair and smiles.

Maybe I’m just not cool enough to understand.