Enter Edward Miliband, Stage Left
I often wonder why it is these days that big, emotional moments for the Labour Party make discerning people in Britain want to cringe, groan, laugh and shake their heads. On balance, I’ve decided it has something to do with the belief most of us have that AmDram is ineluctably naff. It’s partly the ham acting, the robotically delivered lines, and the obvious dead hand of the local primary school teacher in every element of the direction. But also the awkwardness when they walk about or try to be funny – and the certainty that some people up there got the job because nobody else wanted to do it. Above all though, Labour stage plays are pure local dramatics for one overriding reason: you never lose the belief for a second that you’re watching unconvincing actors who don’t mean anything they say.
Anne Black, however, had a cameo role consisting entirely of what are alleged to be the votes cast for each candidate . The previously invisible national chair of something or other, she thus had the most exciting job of all, but delivered the results like a trainee funeral director reading the soccer scores for Scottish Division II.
She didn’t really have much to follow. Gordon Brown was wheeled out to bleed all over the rostrum again, with more talk of Sarah and his boys, awkward gags, massive achievements, halved things and doubled things, and plaudits for every Labour deadbeat from Neil Kinnock onwards. Tony Blair wasn’t there but had sent….well, nobody actually: there aren’t any Blairites left in Labour now. The last one came second yesterday, and Gordon steadfastly refused to use the word ‘New’. He was Labour. He’d always been Labour. He always would be Labour. He’d never be anything else ever again but Labour. It was almost as if there was a rumour he might join UKIP, and he was determined to do whatever it took to bury it forever.
Next came Harriet Harman – the triumph of equality over ability – to say she was proud to have been Deputy Leader, but wanted to hand over to Anne Black. Not the Deputiness, the rostrum, hahaha. Nobody knew the results, she said. All blackberries and mobiles and laptops and minders had been taken away from the candidates, a somewhat gauche admission that all five of them were hopelessly leaky. Only Anne Black and they knew the results. And gosh, here come the Five now. So it’s over to Anne Black. David M tried to swallow the camera. Ed M gave his customary impression of a man with a gum-shield in upside down. Ed Balls smiled a gleam I found terrifying. Andy Burnham looked as if his nose might start crying at any second. Diane Abbott stayed in persona as the black Labour Princess Di she’d been doing all day.
Only Labour would’ve fronted Anne Black. I can understand the fear that the audience might get over-excited, but this lady is a veritable weapon of mass drizzle – guaranteed damp streets for every St Patrick’s Day Parade in perpetuity. Yet in the event, the results process was so close, even Anne’s roll call of the dead evoked gasps in the audience. Diane had got minus 3009, Andy minus 280 and Ed Balls 3. But just as it began to look like an edition of QI, David had 128% and his brother 104%.
The BBC’s Nick Robinson intervened to say he’d done the maths, and David was going to win. It was all over. But then somehow, in a cavalcade of drop-outs, share-outs and balls-outs, Ed’s 4400% of ninth preferences just pipped his brother at the last. It was an entirely apt climax for a redistributionist Party.
The last time I was in the Commons gallery, Ed Miliband was overseeing a climate debate. He was deadly dull and oddly pompous – the archetypal precociously average child. His leadership acceptance speech came from the same mould. We may well be in for a few years of Balls the Beast savaging Osborne the Draper, but I suspect we are also going to see Cameron give young Edward a weekly pasting.
There is only one piece of good news from today, and that is the attack of apoplexy this success for Miliband minor is going to give James Delingpole. I’m off to the Telegraph website now to have a look at what he’s posted so far. I shall be donning special anti-glare nuclear blast glasses beforehand.
The Slog 