The Gordon Brown Leadership Speculation stories need no further fuelling. The issue has been well and truly doused with accelerant, lit and is a fully ablaze arson attack.
So let's throw a bucket of cold water on it instead.
The most recent bout of speculation (ask yourself who is doing the speculating) came after young David Miliband wrote that article. The media saw it not as writing on a page, some words with meaning, but as a Leadership Bid.
As the BBC's borderline excitable Nick Robinson explained reading the runes, context is everything.
Ever since he became leader many things have been written and said of Gordon Brown. Punditry in the media over recent months has been saying he needs to spell out a vision and that his cabinet needs to be more visible and prominent.
Nick-named 'Brains', David Miliband isn't stupid. He will know from polls, by-election results and media commentary that 'Houston, we have a Gordon-Brown-image praablem'. He will also know that if Gordon Brown were toppled and a new leader installed there would be demands for an immediate General Election which given the polls Labour would have little chance of winning.
Would you in those circumstances hasten your party's defeat by making a leadership bid right now?
Complaints against Tony Blair included that he was too media-savvy, too much the personality and a return to cabinet government was seen as refreshingly welcome.
Seen in this context David Miliband's article made perfect sense as exactly what he said it was in a press conference the following day -not a leadership bid but his contribution, as part of a team -his cabinet colleagues together with Gordon Brown as Prime Minister- spelling out a way forward for Labour and to refocus people's attention on arguments and issues not personalities. Hence, the missing Gordon.
It is often said by insiders and critics alike that the media 'hunt as a pack'. This has never been so clear in the stories written up on this episode than in the repetition across the print and broadcast media that Gordon Brown isn't mentioned in Miliband's article and this is therefore evidence that Miliband doesn't support him and is challenging for the leadership himself.
Having decided on the leadership challenge line as a much juicier source of stories the media completely ignored Miliband's own framing of his intervention and his backing of the Prime Minister when he said:
"Can Gordon lead us into the next election and win? I'm absolutely sure of that."
Similarly, this morning John Denham was interviewed, by a lady stand-in for the holidaying Andrew Marr, about his article in the Sunday Times supporting the Prime Minister. Being dead creative and finding a new angle to pursue she said that he hadn't mentioned Gordon Brown until the end of the article and suggested that this was hardly a 'ringing endorsement'.
Here's what Denham wrote:
"The triple whammy of credit, oil and food is transforming political debate beneath our feet. In Gordon Brown we’ve a prime minister who understands these issues better than anyone else in British politics. Those of us who are part of Labour’s team have a job to do to show why Labour values are as important today as they were 11 years ago. Nothing else helps or matters."
During the interview an exasperated Denham said:
"If you're trying to say that me saying that there's nobody else in British politics more capable than Gordon Brown of doing the job of Prime Minister is not a ringing endorsement then I do begin to wonder what a ringing endorsement would look like."
Sometimes it does feel like journalists inhabit a parallel universe of hidden meanings where black really means white.
As Brown reshuffled his cabinet in June last year, Nick Robinson said of Alistair Darling:
"Darling prides himself on taking the heat and the noise out of politics and just getting on with the job. Doesn't he realise that we journalists have jobs to do?!!!"
Indeed, context is everything. Forgive me if I prefer journalists doused with a large bucket of cold water.
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