Ed Milliband he aint

I just had lunch with the leader of the opposition, Nawshirwan Mistefa. I'm a bit too overwhelmed to say anything else.

He is a bit scary. I thought he just didn't know enough English to understand my questions, but it turns out staring at people who have just spoken, and so allowing an uncomfortable silence to develop, is his specialty.

But it was incredibly kind of him to give his time to a random foreign researcher, and he answered my questions thoughtfully (albeit up to a point). He also gave us beautiful Iraqi-style fish - that is, grilled over a flame which is a metre away, with rice and tomatoes and onions; lovely.

With tea, I interviewed his son, Nma, who grew up in South London and has the accent to prove it but was wearing traditional Kurdish dress and says this is definitely his home. What does he miss? The services: the internet doesn't cut out regularly, and nor does the electricity...we're good at something in the UK. And that reminds me - people compare the Brits favourably to the US colonisers: apparently we left them with roads, schools, a justice system and hospitals, but what have the Americans left? Broken roads and fast food. I don't mention that, along with the infrastructure, we left them an artificial and unstable country which led to the present mess...