A contrast in coverage

Sky are reporting David Miliband's actions yesterday thus:

"Questions over Gordon Brown's leadership look set to continue after the Foreign Secretary's appeared to offer only muted support for the Prime Minister.

David Miliband was among the last Cabinet members to come forward to back Mr Brown after two senior MPs called for a secret vote on his future.

...

Hours after the story emerged, Mr Miliband released a statement.

"I am working closely with the Prime Minister on foreign policy issues and support the re-election campaign for a Labour Government that he is leading," he said.

Sky's political correspondent Glen Oglaza described it as a "terse statement... hardly an unequivocal ringing endorsement."

Mr Miliband later appeared to avoid endorsing Mr Brown on camera and said he was busy focusing on his ministerial duties."

Meanwhile Pravda the BBC see nothing but total loyalty as they have no special mention of David Miliband just this list of the loyal and disloyal with David Miliband summed up thus:

"A friend of the foreign secretary told the BBC that Mr Miliband "thinks that this is going nowhere". In a later statement, Mr Miliband said he was "working closely" with Mr Brown and supported the "re-election campaign he is leading"."

thinks that this is going nowhere", but hoped it would? That's hardly a ringing endorsement of Gordon Brown and if the BBC think that a Labour minister saying he supports the re-election campaign is newsworthy then maybe the Labour government is in more trouble than even I thought.

So as the Labour/BBC alliance desperately try to hold the Gordon Brown is in charge and that this is just a minor difficulty with only Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt involved (albeit acknowledging that they had support outside the cabinet from Charles Clarke, Frank Field, Barry Sheerman & Fiona MacTaggart), it is up to Sky to inform us of the probable cowardice of at two Labour ministers:

"claims by Labour MP Eric Joyce that two current Ministers had promised to resign but backed out at the last minute.

"Of course the couple who'd pledged to act - Geoff and Pat aren't daft - bottled," Mr Joyce wrote on his blog.

"Their (the two Ministers) weakness was ridiculous - as are they. A lot of people know who they are, including Gordon.""

I wonder if these two cowardly ministers are on the BBC's list of "Those Yet to Comment", being John Denham, Yvette Cooper (must be fun in the Balls' household if this is true), Peter Hain and Jim Murphy or if one or more has since declared for Gordon Brown... There are rumours that Patricia Hewitt is an outrider for Harriet Harman's ambitions and listening yesterday to Patricia Hewitt's condescending tones I was reminded of a slightly less unpleasant Harriet Harman.