Do you really want this clown ruling us? (And, no, we don’t mean the one on the left)
GLOOP alert, Britain! Just when the election was in danger of getting serious with talk of the economy and immigration, Ed Miliband went on an amazing telly offensive last night – amazingly saccharine and yankeedoodle, that is. It was so sugary, I felt a little diabetic high coming on.
First we had a short burst of a video interview the Labour leader has done with that ghastly creep Russell Brand.
This was a trailer for a film that will go out today and it was, well, pretty shallow: Miliband entering Brand’s kitchen – yes, another darn kitchen! – to glottal stop his way through a sub- GCSE analysis of international tax laws.
Behind the two men were a couple of votive-style candles and a long washing-up hose.
Dimwit Russell kept staring at our would-be Prime Minister as though he was very odd indeed – this may be the first time I have agreed with Comrade Brand.
The two men, one a multimillionaire, the other the son of Left-wing privilege, com- peted with one another to see who could be the more mockney. But that little gem was but the taster, the amusebouche, for the real banquet of the evening.
This was a Labour party election broadcast entitled ‘Ed Miliband – a Portrait’ and made by a Hollywood director called Paul Greengrass.
Boy, oh boy, what a schlock horror it proved. I found myself torn. Part of me wanted to dive for cover, almost overwhelmed by nausea. The other part of me, like a vole caught in the searchlights, froze in fascination. It is always horribly interesting to see how low politicians will pull us, taste-wise, and this one hauled us down to the very bottom of the mid-Atlantic.
Various poses: Ed in a blue pullover on a garden bench; Ed striding manfully through the Westminster corridors; Ed telling us repeatedly that he
was ‘ready, ready’ for power; and Ed meeting a few voters.
He told us about his family. Correction. He told us about his Dad. The Marxist one, not that he told us that he was a vehement Leftwinger. He even told us that his father had once been a removals man. Well, good for him. I was once a dustman. Does that make me a hero?
HE told us about his family, but only up to a point. He did not mention his brother. Director Greengrass threw every trick he could: stirring chords, gooey music at another point, close-ups of the Joe Bugnerish Miliband profile, clips of people nodding in awed agreement as Ed told us, again, that he was ‘ready, ready’ to get his little Left-wing fingers on our nuclear button.
We even had that cliché of modern political documentaries – the shot of the Leader on a train, thinking magnificent thoughts as the countryside whizzes past in a blur.
He told us he had ‘thought deeply’ about his politics. Well, yes, that is always an advantage in a would-be prime minister. How reassuring. Let’s all vote for him!
He told us that optimists won elections. This from the Labour party that has been so remorselessly pessimistic about our country and its economy since 2010. The deficit? It went unmentioned. Again.
‘It’s been a hard road,’ he said. Cue shot of, er, a road. And a taxi. And then we saw him on a doorstep. ‘If you get out of Westminster,’ said the man whose whole being screams privilege and the Westminster village, ‘you get such a different picture.’
‘Call on me, call on me, call on me,’ said the man who yesterday held a big meeting about immigration from which he barred the press.
Neil Kinnock was once filmed on top of a mountain. It did his ratings a terrific lot of good. He lost two elections.
Will this glurp of appallingly Americanised gloop ( no doubt approved by his US campaign strategist) have won British hearts? Or will it have just made a nation of proudly sarcastic raspberry blowers honk with cheery laughter?
Citizens, over to you.