And they’ve wasted tens of thousands on ridiculed ‘Milistone’
ED Miliband defended his bizarre plan to erect an 8ft monument to his manifesto pledges in the Downing Street garden yesterday, as David Cameron vowed to make it a ‘tombstone for Labour’.
The Labour leader insisted the limestone sculpture, said to have cost tens of thousands of pounds, was designed to show his pledges were literally ‘carved in stone’.
It was unveiled at the weekend to near-universal ridicule and mocking images on the internet, many depicting Mr Miliband as Moses with the Ten Commandments.
He said ‘working people’ would be able to see the piece and hold his government to account, until it was pointed out that members of the public would not be able to view it over the No 10 wall.
Mr Miliband was accused of hubris ‘on a biblical scale’ after appearing in front of the stone and suggesting he would gaze out on it every day as prime minister.
The monolith bears the Labour Party logo and Mr Miliband’s signature beneath six election pledges including ‘a strong economic foundation’ and ‘an NHS with time to care’.
Mr Cameron said he had initially thought a report of what was quickly branded ‘the Milistone’ or ‘the Ed Stone’ was a ‘total spoof’.
‘What world do these people live in?’ he asked. ‘It would look terrible… and it’s slightly curtain measuring, isn’t it?’
The Prime Minister said that rather than Mr Miliband’s ‘vacuous’ commitments, the monument should be transformed i nto a tombstone for Labour and reinscribed with the words: ‘We spent too much, we borrowed too much and we taxed too much. RIP.’
Chancellor George Osborne said the episode was more hubristic than Neil Kinnock’ s ill-fated preelection rally before the 1992 election, where he appeared to take victory for granted.
‘What has quickly become known as the “Ed Stone” has managed to make Neil Kinnock’s Sheffield Rally look shy and retiring,’ he said.
Experts said the limestone slab was likely to have cost tens of thousands of pounds, taken several weeks to produce and weigh in excess of one ton.
Steve Walley, managing director of London Stone, said: ‘That will not be cheap. It looks to me like Portland limestone. We’re talking thousands of pounds just for the materials.
‘What’s he going to do with it if he doesn’t get into No 10?’
Ryan Jennings, a stonemason from North-West London, said: ‘You are looking at quite a lot. I would charge £30,000 for that. A limestone slab that big is expensive, and you’ve got a lot of work to do to it.
‘You’ve got to find a competent stone carver to get all the words done properly.
‘There are not a lot of good stonemasons around of that quality, and the best ones charge on a “sky’s the limit” basis.’
Labour aides refused to discuss the cost of the carving, where it is being stored or suggestions that it was the brainchild of one of Mr Miliband’s senior aides, Torsten Bell.
John Rentoul, Tony Blair’s biographer, said: ‘Ed Miliband must have agreed to it. I think it’s the most absurd, embarrassing, childish, silly, patronising, ridiculous gimmick I have ever seen.’
London Mayor Boris Johnson described the monument as ‘some weird Commie slab’.
‘In true totalitarian fashion, he has signed it himself, and appended the red-rose Socialist logo of the Labour Party,’ he said.
‘Let us consign Milibandias and his tombstone to the bafflement of future archaeologists. Let it go down as the last act of a desperate candidate, and the heaviest suicide note in history.’
Speaking to Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Miliband insisted he did not regret commissioning the piece. ‘Not at all, because I think trust is a huge issue in this election. The difference with our pledges is that they are not going to expire on May 8,’ he said.
However Robert Davis, chairman of Westminster council’s planning committee, indicated Mr Miliband would be unlikely to get planning permission f or the structure because of Downing Street’s Grade I listed status.