Is David Miliband the most lightweight Foreign Secretary since the War? Admittedly there's strong competition for the post. From Jack Straw backwards, the history of British post-war politics has been peppered with foreign secretaries who've loved the travel and prancing about at summits but lacked the grasp of foreign circumstances and British interests to do an effective job.
Yet Miliband, in office for just over two years, has been particularly weak, even by the standards of Straw, in the extent to which he has managed to sound the wrong note at the wrong time. Whether it was making Russia's invasion of Georgia into the equivalent of the German invasion of Poland at the moment the EU was trying a more nuanced stance, issuing virtual fatwas against the Sudanese and Zimbabwean presidents to absolutely no effect whatsoever, or in adopting a continuously patronising tone towards our Continental allies, Miliband seems to have an innate ability to misjudge the situation and Britain's role in it.
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