MAIL COMMENT: Labour falls prey to summer madness

The Mail has enough respect for the ambitious young Foreign Secretary to know that can't be true. 

Though only 43, Mr Miliband has been in politics or on its fringes since he was in short trousers.

First bid: David Miliband was half-hearted in his praise of Gordon Brown

He knows precisely how the game works  -  and he knew very well that his article, bland and boring though it was, would be seen throughout the febrile Westminster village as a first, tentative rallying-cry for a leadership bid.

No wonder Mr Brown is furious. As his allies say, it was a self-serving exercise in navel-gazing, just when the Prime Minister needs all the support he can get. 

Mr Miliband owes much to Mr Brown, who made him Foreign Secretary  -  when many thought him too lightweight  -  after he ducked out of a contest to succeed Tony Blair. This coded attack seems a strange way of repaying that debt.

His behaviour might have commanded more respect if he had openly declared his ambition to challenge the Prime Minister or set out a convincing alternative vision for Britain. 

Instead, he recycled the same tired words and phrases  -  'modern', 'modernising', 'the many, not the few'  -  which he used to churn out for Tony Blair more than a decade ago.

It's as if he believes all Britain needs is a more photogenic face in No 10. He may well find that ordinary voters  -  when at last they have their say  -  have other ideas. 

Meanwhile, Mr Miliband's half-hearted praise of Mr Brown yesterday merely compounded his offence. 

By all means let him launch a leadership challenge, if he insists  -  though win or lose, he may live to regret it (ask William Hague, who peaked too young, or Michael Heseltine, who never did).

The Mail believes, however, he would be better advised to put his moment of summer madness behind him and get on with the job of defending Britain's interests in a troubled world. Assuming, of course, Mr Brown allows him to keep it.

One law for them...

Billionaires Hans and Eva Rausing were caught with enough heroin and cocaine to put a backstreet addict behind bars. Yet incredibly, they didn't even have to go to court.

They left that to their lawyers, who earned their fees by getting them off with 'conditional cautions', meaning they won't even have criminal records. 

Told by the judge the charges would be formally discontinued next month, their solicitor loftily replied: 'That is a course that is acceptable to them both.' 

It is utterly unacceptable to everyone who believes Britain should get tough on drugs  -  and that rich and poor should be equal before the law.

Punishing the victims

What sort of justice is it, when victims are fined for the crimes committed against them? Alas, the answer is British justice, as administered by Ofcom.

Yesterday, the broadcasting watchdog fined the BBC a record £400,000 for 'premeditated fakery' in its phone-ins.

Programmes such as Comic Relief, Children in Need and Sport Relief, deceived viewers into entering unwinnable competitions.

Yet it is those same viewers  -  and the rest of us  -  who will now have to pay the fines through our TV licence fees.

In a system of justice worthy of the name, wouldn't the penalties be paid by the individuals responsible for the deceit  -  or deducted from the bonuses of the BBC's directors?