Superficial hustings review

I’m a good way off deciding who I want for Labour leader, so all I’m going to say about yesterday’s Newsnight hustings is a few tiny remarks on how they came across (IMHO).

David Miliband is making an effort to seem prime ministerial, and his model for that is Tony Blair. I got that same sense of ‘I see your point of view but the truth we have to face is such-and-such’ from him. He pulls it off competently, but is it what we want?

Ed Miliband is looking and sounding even younger. I would never have guessed from that performance that he was 40.

Andy Burnham looked like a puppet wearing eyeliner.

Diane Abbott and Ed Balls are, in their very different ways, insufferably smug.

As for their actual political positions, the format – five of them in little over half an hour – didn’t do much to draw these out. I remain unsure and uninspired.