Whatever else one thinks of David Miliband, he should be applauded for reviving what my English teacher used to call practical criticism. The practice of close, line-by-line reading of a text to tease out meaning and discover what lies behind teasing ambiguity and historical allusions had rather gone out of fashion. Until the Foreign Secretary's article in The Guardian appeared.

Since then it's been analysed for hidden meanings more often, and more closely, than the entire GCSE poetry syllabus. Maybe we should put it in next year's paper instead of My Last Duchess as a study in statecraft. But there's another contribution that the Miliband leadership campaign has made to reviving the ancient art of lit crit. In one article on the general positioning that appeared the other week a Miliband ally said of his candidate, “with David it's a case of Barkis is willin'.”

I have never before heard of the simple cart driver from David Copperfield who falls in love with Peggotty on account of her cooking being used as a model for prime ministerial ambition. But I have to say that I am impressed that Team Miliband think the correct code to signal their intentions is the language of Dickens. Normally the discourse of leadership elections sounds as though it's come from Minder (put up or shut up) or Doctor At Sea (the time has come to lance the boil...). David Copperfield is several steps up. But how do others hit back? Does Jack Straw borrow from A Tale of Two Cities and argue he's about to do a far, far better thing now than he has ever done? Does the Harman camp portray their heroine as Nancy to the PM's Bill Sikes or a commanding Lady Dedlock? One thing is certain. At least we all know who in the Cabinet is Mr Micawber...

May I interrupt to say...

This August, as in 1914, is clearly a season for war. David Miliband and Jack Straw have manoeuvred their artillery into position. So I'd better not get left out. Mind you, I can't help recalling Voltaire who, when asked on his deathbed to reject the Devil and all his works, said that this was no time to be making new enemies. Still, if I have to attack anyone, let me turn my fire on a group that can't fight back - the posh. As readers will know, this is difficult for me. I love snob fiction (John Buchan, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell) and snob memoirs (James Lees-Milne, Chips Channon, Anthony Powell). I'm even a sucker for snob history (anything with Whig dukes and/or German princelings). But I've recently developed an aversion to snob talk.

It's not name-dropping, genealogy or even oneupmanship that offends me. All, in their way, are richly entertaining. No, what offends is the interruption. There is a terrible tendency among a self-confident section of society to talk over their interlocutor. To cut across what someone else is saying. To be driven by what Barack Obama calls the fierce urgency of now when it comes to sharing your thoughts with others. Even as others are trying to share their thoughts with you.

I've come to associate the practice with the posh. But, like wearing Hackett rugby shirts, it's a phenomenon that is now fast spreading across society. Have others noticed this increasing tendency in conversation to cut people off, interrupt, talk over and sideline? Or am I just a prolix booby who needs shutting up?

Truly a world city

Which is the most multicultural neighbourhood of London? Zadie Smith's Brent or Gautam Malkani's Hounslow? Monica Ali's Brick Lane or Blake Morrison's South of the River? How about Her Royal Highness's Kensington Park? Cycling through Kensington and Hyde Parks last week I was struck by how these quintessential stretches of English greensward had been adopted by all London's communities. Middle Eastern families sat in rows of deckchairs, the mums in sober black, the children capering, like an image from the Edwardian seaside. South Asian girls walked by twirling extravagantly long ponytails while Afro-Caribbean boys on their mountain bikes and American bankers on their Rollerblades overtook one another on the path. It's now impossible to imagine London as anything other than a global city, the most cosmopolitan on Earth. The empire, which once comprehended so many peoples under one Queen, may have long vanished. but London is now, like Hadrian's Rome, surely the world's capital.

Last of the unadorned

Cycling also alerted me to another trend - the Beckhamisation of the British male. The number of men, from all backgrounds, sporting tattoos continues to rise. Is this trend irreversible? Like some pale legionary of Hadrian's, am I destined to be the last of a generation to live and die with my body drab and unadorned?

Michael Gove is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath

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