Even The Guardian thinks it’s a bad joke

The most stinging criticism of the monument came in the Guardian. Just three days after the newspaper urged its readers to vote Labour, sketch writer John Crace subjected Mr Miliband to a merciless – and wickedly amusing – attack. here is an edited version:

In several thousand years’ time, an archaeologist will uncover a 2.6 metre piece of stone that had been lying buried for hundreds of years. Scholars will spend just as long thereafter trying to interpret its meaning. Was it the centre of a hitherto unknown civilisation based around the sun god Ed? ...

Of all the stunts, in all the towns … In one of the tightest elections in 50 years, which looks set to be won by the party leader the public mistrusts the least, Ed Miliband has just raised the stupidity bar still higher.

It makes Neil Kinnock’s 1992 ‘We’re all right’ Sheffield rally moment look almost clever ... Even the title is a hostage to fortune. A Bet- ter Plan. A Better Future. This stone Ed, I’m sorry to say, is symbolic of a totally Crap Plan. Or worse, No Plan. Then there are the pledges.

1. A Strong Economic Foundation. When some future Arthur Evans finds this battered, broken foundation stone several hundred feet underground his first thought will be ‘My name is Edymandias, King of Kings / Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.’ Shelley will last far longer than this.

As for the rest … They read more like focus group findings than serious electoral promises …

If Moses had come down from Mount Sinai with commandments as dopey as this, the history of religion would have been rewritten.

The Israelites would just have said to themselves: ‘That Moses. He’s having a laugh.’ Except Ed isn’t apparently... The only thing that can be said for Ed’s tablet – apart from, start taking different ones – is that there are only six commandments rather than the full ten. Some embarrassment saved.