So, as you do, I stepped out into the late-afternoon sun in an unfamiliar city, without knowing a word of the language, beyond the word for bus station: ‘oto gar’, which I’d remembered thanks to it’s similarity to the French equivalent.

Flipping open my Syria Rough Guide (which I only had because the Lonely Planet wasn’t available), I realized how woefully under prepared I was. Woefully. The kind of woeful under preparedness that news anchors comment on when a couple of (always us British) tourists unwittingly get lost in the desert, or up a mountain or are found sky diving without parachutes.

All I knew, based on the A5 map in my pocket, was that Adana wasn’t close enough to the border yet. I needed to get to Antakya, the legendary city of Antioch, within the semi-legendary republic of Hatay (visited by Indiana Jones in Raiders), if I was going to be within striking distance of Alleppo by midnight.

As I pondered whether to ask a bystander for ‘Oto Gar’, ‘Hotel’ (keeping in mind that, as a foreigner they’d direct me to the $150 a night Hilton), or to put my Scout skills into practice and strike out into this city and see if I could find some clues, the answer arrived. A cab driver screeched up and hopped out. “Oto Gar? Oto Gar?” he said. I nodded eagerly at my rescuer. Shit- I was going to be screwed.

Screeching off, I rather naively reached for a seatbelt. He was clearly offended. “No need, no nid” he motioned, swerving across the lanes of traffic like an F1 driver. He started conversing in Turkish, evidently assuming that our previous exchanges in English had just been for fun. “My name Mustafa, you”.

“Ben”, I replied, a forcing a smile. “Halep?” he speculated. I nodded, having thought it wise to at least know the Turkish name for Aleppo. Racing down the carriageway, he paused, thought for a second, and taking both hands off the wheel, pulled out a tissue box, pointing at the back. I could just about make out ‘$250′ scrawled on it. I laughed.

“You take me all way to Halep?”, figuring that he might just get the gist, whilst feigning amusement that anyone would pay that much for a trip which, I’d been informed, should cost no more than $90, even if you were mad or desperate enough to do it in a taxi.

From what I could understand, last week a pair of Spaniards had paid that amount for the 7 hour trip to the border with this crazy taxi driver. I feigned a belly laugh- better to keep the guy onside, and to laugh at the expense of a fellow foreigner. “Oto Gar” I repeated, slowly and clearly; there was no way I was going on a similar ride, thanks.

With both hands, he handed back the tissue box and pen. “Adana, Alep” he repeated. It was tempting- guaranteed arrival this evening, when I couldn’t be sure if I could find a bus to take me to Antakya, let alone Aleppo. And a ride with this guy across the Syrian desert would certainly be an experience to write home to all of you about. I scrawled a number, 60 Euros. Vastly more than the coach ride would’ve cost, but the possible cost of the Adana Hilton.

Still driving down the middle of the dual carriageway, he wrote 80. Before I would give a firm reply, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to be dumped off in some other, even more remote location. “Map” I said, pointing at the boot of the car, where my A5 map was located.

We swerved over onto the pavement, pulled out the map, and stood at the back of the car, my guidebook spread out across the back of the car as I pointed to the two locations, alternately. Adana, Allep, 60 Euro? I repeated. “No”. “Passport” “Passport Suriye”. From this I gathered that he’d be taking me as far as the Syrian border and leaving me there, which didn’t seem particularly attractive, particularly if they happened, for whatever reason, to dislike my Syrian visa.

I got cold feet. I was out, as Dragon Duncan Ballantyne would say, “yer lost me”. I wasn’t sure if it was the 7 hour ride through the desert, lack of seatbelts, the inability to communicate properly, exorbitant price or the uncertainty of the destination that did it for me, but there was just something not right about this guy. I was pretty sure, if nothing else, that my travel insurance didn’t cover people like him.

I shook my head. “Oto Gar” “Oto Gar” I repeated, and now intended to repeat until such time as I was safely there. He wasn’t happy. “Problem?” “Problem?” he repeated, sounding genuinely hurt and perplexed. I shrugged, “No problem”. “Koste?” He enquired. I shook my head, not wishing to re-open negotiations- when the coach journey I knew cost just 10 Euros, it wasn’t justifiable, simple as that.

After 5 minutes of Turkish remonstrations during which I thought he might just dump me in a ditch and drive off with my bag, we arrived at Adana Oto Gar. All I could do was shrug.

The said Oto Gar reminded me of the massive concrete Catholic cathedrals constructed in France in the 1960s, with a soaring roof housing kiosks of over 40 different coach companies. This, Maggie- is what real competition. “Halep?” “Antakya?” I asked around, eventually finding the appropriate window, along with a guy who spoke English.

One in 20 minutes, 14 Lira (6 pounds), 3 hour journey- a journey that would take me within about 80km of Aleppo. I wanted to hug the guy, as he took my money, handed the ticket, and then, me being a clearly witless foreigner (something at this stage I would readily admit to), even found a chaperone to take me to the waiting coach.

Air conditioned, spacious, free newspapers, TVs, coffee, drinks and a pair of attendants- airline style to ensure you’re kept comfortable. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m en route to Antakya.

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“Well, there’s a pleasant bus station, some nice skyscrapers….and your friends the Americans have a base there”, he chortled. This travel agent, one of many who lined the streets in tourist areas of Istanbul had a hastily-printed sign on his door: ‘Ask me, I know’. In this particular case evidently all he knew about Adana was that it was not somewhere worth going to. As I turned to go out the door, I flung back: “but it is easy to get to Halep (Aleppo), no?”

“Oh yes, my friend- many buses”

Any idea of times or access to a timetable? Of course not. Oh well, I’d have to wing it once I arrived. Worst case scenario, I’d heard, a taxi could do the 4 hour journey for about $90. Heading back onto the street, I could at least be reassured that whilst the ticket in my pocket took me nowhere, that nowhere was roughly near where I wanted to go.

And an American military base too, eh? Before any CIA agents reading this get interested, I had no intention of climbing any fences. However, a vague recollection of American nukes based in Turkey being involved in negotiations around the Cuban Missile crisis did spring to mind, as did an article I’d read just a few weeks ago about the US removing it’s nuclear weapons from the UK, leaving only those based in Turkey and the Eastern European countries it has bribed and coerced with aid.

So, if I’m guessing correctly, sometime tomorrow I’ll be passing the place from which, thousands of miles away, Armageddon could one day be unleashed, with hundreds of these things, I imagine, currently still pointed at Russia, China and a few other places. A brief point of interest, I suppose, if not quite the dramatic scenery one might wish for.

The scene in front of me is growing to be an increasingly familiar one, yet not entirely disagreeable. Train window to my left, compartment door to the right, sink and mirror in the right hand corner, desk/ cupboard in front of me, and seated in an arm chair which folds down into a ready-made bed. I have decided, ladies and gentlemen, that this is the way to travel. In terms of political aspirations, let’s just say Abe Lincoln and his campaign train had the right idea.

In terms of layout, my cabin in the Istanbul-Adana overnighter is exactly the same as those 24 hours I spent from Belgrade to Istanbul, albeit with a 50 year great leap forward. The sink is usable, there are power sockets, a restaurant car, and- get this, my very own fridge and thermostat.

Such exuberance makes the hostel where I’ve spent the past 4 nights look like a total dive (which is was, but a palace in comparison to the gloriously grubby Balkan express). To echo the phrases of my travel guide, what it lacks in character, it makes up for with a few of the creature comforts which, I’d imagine, will be missing in the kinds of places I’ll be staying in Syria.

Unfortunately though, the exhilarating exploits aboard the Serbian train are not to be repeated- a last minute and unexpected lack of any alcohol for sale at Hayderpassa station put paid to that one. Expecting no restaurant car, I however took the self-indulgent opportunity to go native. It’s bullshit of course- 90% of Istanbulites shop at the local supermarket like the one next to my hostel- but one particular ulterior motive of this trip has always been to play out my Orientalist, T.E. Lawrencesque fantasies.

What better way than to spend the morning roaming the Bazaar behaving like a discerning buyer of kilos of Pistachios, Dried Figs, Pistachio Lokum (Turkish delight), cheese, olives and bread?. It’s all very good, although I suspect it may necessitate a visit to the (shudder, although admittedly immaculate) squat at the rear of the carriage.

So I do, once again, find myself rattling through darkness, cocooned in my own private apartment, not 100% sure of where I’m going, but feeling unexpectedly relaxed and at ease. No night-time border crossings to worry about here either. Fingers crossed I’m on the right train though- having done my research, Istanbul-Adana forms part of the Berlin-Baghdad railway. Assuming the train stops where it’s supposed to, more on that tomorrow.

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In this part of town, at least, you must say no. Quickly, firmly, clearly and without hesitation or consideration of sensibilities. Because everyone you meet wants to something, and everything, from a bystander’s help in finding the correct direction, to the water, has a price.

“Hello, how are you, where are you from?” is the first question, usually rattled off in a single monotone sentence, without pause. This question is the first test, for they will tailor the negotiations that involuntarily follow based on a finely tuned knowledge, accumulated over years, of the various habits of different nationalities. They will also, thanks to your naive response, now posses an intimate knowledge of your current emotional state and manipulate accordingly.

At this stage, an informed traveler will have arrived armed with knowledge of the Uzbek for ‘I do not speak Turkish’ and have walked away and carried on with what is likely to be a fantastic day in Istanbul.

For anyone foolish, or ballsy, enough to carry the conversation any further, the next question will always be “Where are you going, how long have you been in Istanbul, do you like it here?”, again all as a single uninterrupted sentence. All three questions are at the most basic level, different ways of asking “Would you like to be scammed?”.

Responding that you have just arrived this morning, translates roughly as “Come and get me, I was born yesterday”, whilst someone foolish enough to show any doubt whatsoever about their onward direction of travel, or to express any shortcomings or disappointments, immediately solicits offers of directions, recommendations, or anything else in their power to help rectify your stay.

Such hospitality is, of course, not to be sniffed at, and in places such as Syria, I am told, and when I was in Belgrade, may be welcomed with no trouble whatsoever.

Accommodate any such offers in tourist areas of Istanbul with anything but with firm and repeated ‘no thank yous’ however, and you run a high risk of finding yourself whisked into this man’s overpriced restaurant, having your shoes shined, boxes of Bosporus water labeled as designer perfume thrust into your hand, or being hauled into a shop to try on a pair of jeans….with payment for their trouble, in all cases demanded. You’re unlikely to be robbed, but remember that in tourist areas, it seems, hospitality is for sale.

To make such sweeping generalizations, of course, is unfair. 1/10 people who want to talk to you will be genuinely interested, and the conversations with them are likely to be goldmines of local information as well as offering hugely rewarding insights into what life, in the real world, is like for people in Turkey. Such conversations alone are good enough reason to treat everyone in the tourist areas with at least some degree of patience and civility. Otherwise, of course, you may as well have turned up in a pith helmet.

***

If a lunchtime stroll alongside the Hagia Sophia is enough to destroy your faith in the basic essence of human goodwill, the rest of Istanbul compensates, and in spades, as I’ll explain when I return in just a few weeks.

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A little man of about 55, he delivered the great benefit of both having a great sense of humour and the ability to humour constant misunderstanding between us. The biro I had brought to fill in my Interrail pass seemed to be broken. Shaking the pen and my head with a mournful expression, indicating that he might lend me his own pen, naturally he read it as an Englishman’s inability to write the date, seizing the ticket it and doing it himself.

Unshaven, with greying combed-back hair and the unmistakable- and it has to be said- predictable aroma of Body odour and cigarette smoke, his own cabin seemed to be wallpapered with old newspapers, ash and dirty socks.

To experience such masochistic grubbiness as an escape from the sterile, safe and mundane circumstances of ones own existence, is, of course, the only good reason for someone to undertake as impractical a trip at this out of choice. In the circumstances, the only logical course of action seemed to be to stop worrying about how I was going to get to Syria, and to just get pissed.

As the water surged down the toilet bowl into the daylight on one of my frequent trips to the amenities, I couldn’t help chuckling.

What the hell was I doing on this train, surrounded by people who I couldn’t communicate with, rolling through God knows where, in a part of the world most people, by choice avoided? Back in England, it had looked like such a good idea- and had made a good story to catch the attention of friends and casual acquaintances alike- the UCAS form too.

But to actually now be on this train, to have gone through with it? Bloody hell, Ben West, what are you playing at?

With Serbian beer flowing through my veins, it was a mixture of disbelief, excitement and trepidation, culiminating in a brief, self-satisfied chuckle. My condition made me even more convinced of the need to clutch the money belt containing passport, tickets and cards. All being well, I would soon be in Asia, having not missed an inch of land or railway track in between here and the UK.

***

I came to my senses, hearing what sounded like the cabin next door being kicked in repeatedly, accompanied by shouts of ‘PAZZPOR KANTROWL’.

Dear God. I had woken up into a war film. They had boarded the train at the border, and, at the last minute, thwarted our escape into neutral territory. Should I jump out the window, or hide under the sink? They would soon discover my true identity, and I would be returned to the POW camp, thrown into jail -or, if my identity papers were not in order, shot as an enemy spy.

Glancing at the clock on my mobile, it was 2am. Had we reached the Turkish border early? I knew at that stage we would be woken up and have to get off the train, and had set my alarm. I quickly got out of bed, put on my shoes, and sat up straight, holding my passport and ticket.

My turn came, and I was ready for him, opening the door of my cabin to save him the trouble, and tentatively handing him my passport, trying to work out the flag embroidered on his shoulder. No Red or crescent, I wasn’t sure of the Bulgarian flag, although, if it wasn’t Turkey, it had to be Bulgaria, didn’t it?

Final destination? Turkey, I blurted, hoping to avoid complication. Shit. He’d seen the Syrian visa glued into a page of the passport- the game was up. Pause. EU? He murmered, half to himself. Yes, I eagerly replied. No comment. He handed the passport back, moving on and giving what sounded like hell to the Serbian fellow a few doors down. God bless European integration.

A few minutes later, the sleeping car attendant wandered by; from what I understood, we’d be at the Turkish border proper in about 10 minutes. “Visa…buy, vend?” I asked, sheepishly. He nodded, and made a joke- as far as I could tell- that the train would not leave without me when I went onto the platform to buy my the 10 GBP stamp in my visa necessary to enter Turkey. I was in this fine man’s hands.

Within an hour, I was back asleep. Just a few hours afrter that, the sun rose through the gaps in the red velvet curtains that barely covered the window. I could the unmistakable concrete skeletons of high-rise holiday apartments under construction. Who’d've thought it? I had actually made it to Turkey.

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Belgrade is a difficult city to love. Arriving at the train station, anybody with any idea about the place knows not to expect neoclassical facades and sweeping avenues.

Even the decrepid, seen-better-days grandeur and Soviet kitsch that pulls the punters into Budapest or Prague is often missing here. Parts are, to be frank, pretty ordinary- run down but without any ‘character’ with which to redeem themselves.

But though the Belgrade is difficult to love and far from easy on the eye, It’s equally tough not to leave with a certain amount of respect for it- or, perhaps, the kind of sly admiration one has for the fat woman flaunting her stuff in the water without giving a damn. It’s a city with thick skin that knows how to have a good time.

The budget airlines haven’t made it here yet, which means people are generally pleased to see you. Your feeble attempts at Serbian are greeted with a slap on the back and a reply in their best English. It’s a friendly place, and at 11 at night, you’ll find the streets lined with families, groups of kids, couples and seniors eating ice creams and drinking beers. There are plenty of bars, hidden in basements and alleyways- the legacy of the various opposition groups to Milosovic in the 1990s. It may be ugly, but it’s got the kind of contagious, care-free attitude that reminds me of New Orleans.

As a history and politics student, it would be dishonest though to pretend that I hadn’t visited Belgrade with a good knowledge of its past, and curiousity about the place we all grew up seeing on TV as a war zone. Traces though are hard to come by, and you have to make quite a consious effort to find them.

One place is the Military Museum which is located in the red-brick Napoleonic-era citidel on the hill and which dominates the city. Alongside flourescent-lit perspex cabinets that have seen better days, containing old military uniforms, swords, and fez going back to pre-history, there’s a seperate exhbit on the 1990 war.Here you can see a piece of that stealth fighter wing the Serbs managed to down during the war, the uniform of one of the captured US soldiers I remember seeing paraded on TV via CNN, as well as remnants of a NATO cluster bomb and horrific photos as a reminder of their grisly work.

What was unusual about Serbia, of course, is that you can visit the museum in the morning, walk past Lush and the Nike store and have lunch in one of the McDonald’s signposted across the city. A couple of blocks away lies the remains of the old State TV headquarters, witth a missile shaped hole gorged out of the frontage. Meanwhile, a nearby construction site for a new cultural center bears a sign delcaring ‘New $3.5m project: A Gift of the American People’, whilst many buses carry similar messages of goodwill from the governments of Japan and Switzerland.

I’m sure that most Serbianse just happy that the buses now run on time, wherever they’ve come from. But still, you have to wonder how it feels for a country with such a long history to have parts of your infrastructure donated by foreigners.

Sitting there, I begin to imagine whether this might be Baghdad in 10 years time. All I can say is that it’s looking off schedule at the moment, and on appearances Albright’s efforts at nation building here seem to have had more succes than Rumsfeld’s. But either way, whether we take it for granted or not, the relentless march of freedom across the globe raises some questions.

Once EasyJet arrives, will Belgrade be distinguishable from Cologne?

The idea that people should stay in poverty or repression for the sake of ‘traditional culture’ and the tourists is pretty grotesque. It’s also rediculous to pretend that the the sweep of international culture across the globe can be rolled back, or that we’d all be better boxed off again.

Serbians are doing better and partying harder than during the bleakness of the Milosovic years, that’s self-evident, confirmed by brief conversations with Serbian young people. But does ‘liberation’ and ‘regime change’ have to mean that every city becomes identical? In another 9 years, will Belgrade be much different to Cologne and other ‘mainstream’ cities?

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We are, however, in the midst of the European Cup in this city, and so, despite the lack of England and its wags this year, there were English signs everywhere. On top of that, literally on the otherside of the platform was the service to Beograd where I’ll be spending the next 12 hours and getting acquainted with Eastern Europe proper. Bingo. With half an hour to spare, I grabbed a drink from the ticket hall, pointing nervously at a bottle of San Pelegrino and Coke…the bastard replied in English.

Why must the English continue to humiliate ourselves as the linguistic retards of Europe? I resolved to get out my Serbian phrasebook and get to work. Govorite li Engleski-  ‘Do you speak English?’…a phrase that will maintain my dignity for the next three days.

The train isn’t a tin can yet- still much nicer than the slam-door jobbies that ran in England until a few years ago. But nonetheless, I’m starting to get excited. More chrome, marbled fiberglass and mould-pattern fabric on this one, and the hairstyles of older people are changing too. A sure sign, I think, that we’re entering Eastern Europe proper- a place still different to our own.

The crossing into Hungary comes at about 45 minutes after leaving Vienna, and its at this stage that the image many people- particularly Americans have of Europe- goes put the window. On either side of the track, are wide, open plains, miles of scrub land and open sky, interspersed with rusty fence poles and barbed wire, and the occasional windmill. Not forgetting that bison once roamed Poland, it’s perhaps easier to see how 100 years ago, Hungarian, Slovak and Austrians were enticed to the Mid-Western United States.

Europe has big, open wilderness of its own- just in less quantity, with the promise of all that open range somewhat muted by a longer, and even dirtier history of human settlement. After all, a Tesco has just rolled by,

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If Busch can replicate something like that, then all credit to them, because it’s genuinely an amazing sight. Who in their right mind would fly? I’m lying in my couchette, beer and pretzels in hand, looking out the window as traditional villages zip by along with their whitewashed walls and pointy spires, shadow starting to fall over the forested valley and the twinkling castles and spires up in the hills above. You can keep your airline meals, ta.

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That’s not to say that Cologne- or what I saw of it in my 4 hour stay, is an unpleasant place, or somewhere without character. The cathedral is an impressive looking thing, still wearing its sinister black coat of dust and soot accumulated down the ages, and consequently had a considerably Gothic feel, which imposes on you like a stern old man. You don’t get that so much in British cathedrals since they began scrubbing them up a few years ago, giving them a hyper-realistic, friendlier, more pastoral feel, as if they were born yesterday and hadn’t existed before Thatcher brought the wealth necessary for the cleanup to begin.

Either way, Cologne cathedral is raised up on a pedestal above the square that next to the main train station, where the youth of Germany gather to smoke and grind skateboards along the steps, along with stereotypically large ladies carrying their shopping back from Aldi.

Beyond the cathedral, however, about all I managed was a stroll down to the river, and that famous iron bridge. Glancing over at a rack of postcards, I did a bit of a double take, seeing a photograph, c. 1945 of the bridge twisted like a steel snake half submerged in the river. For a split second, I assumed it must be one of those surrealist, black & white edge of reason, type of shots, but no, apparently we do mention the war here. In passing at least.

The City Nightline service from Koln to Wein Westbahnhof was running 50 minutes late, so I took the opportunity whilst in Germany to grab a Pilsner and Bockwurst on a paper plate, not forgetting mustard and Roll (eaten separately from the sausage), and take a break. Tourist trap in the middle of Koln station, alongside Pizza Hut and Burger King? Of course, but by that point, I was past caring, and with Cologne cathedral out of view, I desperately needed reminding that I was in Germany.

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However. Syria deserves better than to be compared unfavorably to Iran- it’s got plenty going for it in it’s own right, as far as I can tell. And from your perspective, it’s probably best that I’m not headed for Iran - I would only have bored you senseless with a load of pretentious claptrap about fallen empires, Shahs and so forth, polemics about how oil made the modern world, and generally spent too long talking, rather than listening.

Syria on the other hand- well, it seems to be more discrete. It’s got the oldest cities on Earth, but doesn’t wear it on its sleeve. More to learn, more reason to listen, more discoveries to be made. But we’ll leave that until another day. We’ve only just arrived at Ebbsfleet, and I’ve got hours of train journeys ahead of me, so no rush.

One thing did strike me in the bath last night though as I relaxed, having packed my bags and took the opportunity to survey the road ahead.

The journey I’m planning to make over the next few weeks would have been impossible for my parents or, for that matter, my Grandparents. The trip I’m making would not have been possible when I was born.

In 1988, the channel tunnel and high speed rail links were still being built. To be in Cologne by the afternoon was just hot-air from the European bureaucrats we love to despise. And for my Grandparents, to be in Cologne by afternoon- well, Cologne wasn’t a real place, it was somewhere in the news- a war zone. A World which, to their parents had been within reach, but which in that time had ceased to be a reality.

Tomorrow, I’ll be spending the night at a hostel in Belgrade, run by an American and his wife. Ten years ago, we watched as Americans cruise missiles rained on Serbian rooftops, and as thousands of Kosovan and Serb refugees were marched onto cattle carriages in scenes that belonged to my Grandparents generation.

For the first year of my life, and for my parents, Poland, Berlin and Ukraine were foreign countries. They were secretive police states in a parallel universe. To visit them was to enter a time warp or, at best, an dystopian alternative future which echoed our own but diverged, revolving around Moscow rather than Washington.

We are all Europe now. When you can reach halfway across the continent in a day, traveling slowly enough to see the land in between and a continous belt of people, how can you call the people you meet there foreigners? A Chelsea supporter can live in Cologne or Croatia, a Real Madrid supporter in Rheims. Like it or not, we’re all putting club before country, to some extent.

And Syria? At this stage, all I can offer is uninformed idealism- and geography. There’s no uninhabited ocean between us. The Middle East is no unbridgable pit of disaster, no problem zone taped off and- despite what some might say, no rival civilization to our own.

Such a narrative is bollocks, and is only good for furthering specific interests. Syria didn’t developing a vacuum for hundreds of years, miraculously emerging one September day to devour own own society and everything we stand for. There are castles in Syria where you half expect to see a National Trust volunteer asking you not to touch, and villages where they speak the language of Jesus. That’s not to ignore our differences- it’s the differences that make the distance worthwhile, but our pasts are very much intertwined.

With the English channel somewhere above my head as I write this, don’t forget: to our parents and Grandparents, Europe seemed every bit as far away as Syria does now.

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We all know the way the wind is blowing, so let’s make it speedy and painless. My preference would be Milliband for PM, Alan Johnson Chancellor, Yvette Cooper for Deputy, and put Jack Straw back in the FCO, in time for the summer recess.
Assuming Balls or Darling don’t take the reins, however, anyone will do. He should be persuaded to announce his resignation within the next few weeks and set a timetable for new leadership elections, preferably with the new leader in place by the Summer recess.
In the meantime, BoJo can run riot in London and remind everyone how bad the Tories are, and in 2009, we can have an election like we should have done last year….do it that way, and we might just stand a chance. At least we go down fighting, rather than with our head between our legs.

This will give him plenty of time to prepare for party conference and to start talking to the Lib Dems about whether, in the worst-case scenario at the next general election, they want a Tory government.

Once the US elections are out of the way, Milliband then needs to look stateside, as Blair did, and hire in some of Obama’s advisors to bring in the same kind of freshness, excitement and, yes, glamour which we’ve seen out there. He also needs to be using their and others’ know-how to put together a network of young activists at the grassroots, on a scale not previously seen in this country, in preparation for the next general election.

As for Brown, I think he would make a fantastic paper-pusher at the IMF.

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