“Miliband’s journey – into the community, into the faith, and into a closer if still critical relationship to Israel – reached a new way-station last night.

It was certainly a very personal speech. He explained that he felt “huge respect, admiration and indeed a debt…to Israel for the sanctuary it gave my grandmother – Israel gave her comfort.”

But it was also a speech that gave party members a model of how to talk about Israel and Palestine.

First, he was fiercely pro-two state solution, unwilling to see any contradiction in being a friend of Israel and a friend of Palestine. He spoke a language of mutual recognition, mutual compromise and peace.  That remains the beginning of all wisdom on the issue, as LFI rightly point out. Second, he was scathing of the polarising and counter-productive boycott movement.”

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