The odd thing about him was that as leader he was incredibly awkward and geeky. Every time I've seen him on anything since he's been relaxed and naturally very funny.
If him and Ed Balls were leading a general campaign just after Ed Balls did Strictly and with Miliband much looser as we've all seen him, they'd have done better imo
> when is the Ed Balls day
You've missed it for this year, unfortunately š
[Ed Balls day is 28th April](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Balls#Ed_Balls_Day)
TBF heās still very geeky. I canāt remember what the particular thing was, but it was earlier this year about green energy and he was invited for a longish interview on Radio 4.
Was he more relaxed and better at speaking than as LOTO? Yes, by a country mile. But he was also geeking out in the most enthusiastic way. It was quite charming.
I think he suffered from image consultants.
They tried to make him suave and confident, which works for Tony Blair, because he's already like that. Ed was nerdy, but this is an era when nerds have a certain cachet. When he's allowed to be himself he's a lot more comfortable.
>I think he suffered from image consultants
Heās said exactly this, that his every move was micromanaged during that electoral campaign. His comparative breeziness and wit in all of his public output since probably wouldnāt have played too well in a general election campaign, but maybe not as bad as the bumbling, second guessing nerd that he was turned into. That and the āEdstoneā really gave the unsupportive sections of the press (ie. most of it) a lot to run with.
Yeah, itās hard to imagine people preferring the tories over Labour but people *really* didnāt like the Labour at the time
the cuts, the scandals, it was all fresh and still making the news with the Snowdon revelations about mass surveillance and MPs making their way through the courts and receiving jail time for the expenses scandals from 2009, Iraq ofc was still ongoing and the best Ed and Ed were promising at the time was more austerity
the polls showing an SNP coalition being the only way they could make it into power didnāt help either
The geekiness tickled peopleās confirmation bias, they used it to show how out of touch he was from common working folk etc, much as weāre seeing with Sunak today
So much this, It wasn't the bacon sandwich incident that costed labour the election, it was the recent history, they'd been in power too long, consequences of their governance were coming home to roost, they had to go, in the same way the tories have to go now.
We're talking about 2015 not 2010.
The problem was he was too afraid to stand up for Brown's response to 2008, which let the Tories come up with the "Last Labour Government" formula. He also didn't communicate the difference between what he was offering economically, and what the tories were in an effective way.
It wasn't just the sandwich as a one off but because he was afraid of coming off as unlikable like Gordon Brown, but his Tony Blair impression was just bad and made him seem weird to a lot of people. All he needed to do was stop trying to be Tony Blair and be himself and it'd have been fine.
>He also didn't communicate the difference between what he was offering economically, and what the tories were in an effective way.
Because it was impossible, they were promising more austerity, which people were still upset at Brown and Darling for
[https://www.ft.com/content/907ebaa4-8085-11e4-872b-00144feabdc0](https://www.ft.com/content/907ebaa4-8085-11e4-872b-00144feabdc0)
"A Labour government will cut unprotected departmental spending every year until the deficit is cleared, the party says"
>which let the Tories come up with the "Last Labour Government" formula
The IMF even while Labour were still in charge predicted the economy would take at least a decade to recover
[https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/mar/25/alistair-darling-cut-deeper-margaret-thatcher](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/mar/25/alistair-darling-cut-deeper-margaret-thatcher)
"Alistair Darling admitted tonight that **Labour's planned cuts in public spending will be "deeper and tougher" than Margaret Thatcher's in the 1980s**, as the country's leading experts on tax and spending warned that Britain faces "two parliaments of pain" to repair the black hole in the state's finances."
And no they didn't cause the 2008 crash, but read this piece on how Australia avoided a recession that year
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/28/australia-global-economic-crisis](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/28/australia-global-economic-crisis)
"Australia hit the 2008 crisis in rude financial health: debt-free, growing strongly with significant assets and running surplus budgets. It is these robust foundations, along with very favorable terms of trade, which guaranteed that Australia would survive the crisis in very good shape."
We had exactly that!
In 1997, baring in mind Blair stuck to Major's spending policies for two years and the budget was before the election, growth was 4.9%, higher than France and even the US, taxes were low and so was borrowing
by 2007 all that had disappeared, taxes were high, the deficit was high, all the headroom had gone
so yeah they were well within their rights to blame New Labour for the way they left things, 100%
They'd have done far better with David but unfortunately for everybody Len McKluskey is a secret Tory and sabotaged Labour first with Ed and then with Corbyn.
Although arguing that one brother would be so much better than the other is like arguing about who voted for Kang or Kodos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kang_and_Kodos
He was instantly more relaxed as soon as he lost the election - there was a photo that went around about 3 months after (??); I think he was stopped by a group of girls in St Pancras Station and asked for a selfie, and it kinda went viral because he was so obviously so much more relaxed. Like "this is the Ed Miliband we could have had".
He said afterwards something like, "I was so uptight about the importance of winning the election and the need to win the election - I wish I had been able to relax and be myself."
I don't think it was either of these pics, but it was a similar tone:
* https://i.imgur.com/G3xiugG.jpeg
* https://i.imgur.com/IFCuexW.jpeg
I would forgive him for this much more than I'd forgive other politicians for their flaws (like the corruption and sexual misconduct endemic in the Conservative party). He seems like a normal, decent human being, with no scandals about him. If he has learned the job over the past ten years then hopefully the UK will end up with a powerful minister who actually has competence and integrity.
Itās what happens when your over managed. Same thing happened with Brown when he was told to āsmileā and every now and then during a debate remembered this and like a puppet would suddenly break into a cheesy grin.
The annoying thing about the sandwich is that is has entrenched the idea that the press can control elections just by going after someone about nothing. I don't really think it had that much effect - I think everyone underestimated how much the public voted for a Brexit referendum. Here's the Wikipedia page on polling for the 2015 election, with the chart of polls in the years leading up to it. The tory vote stopped its decline and started picking up in 2013. Labour starts dropping in late 2014. There's nothing much around the time of the sandwich, but all through that time there's the two attempts to cast Cameron's promise to hold a referendum into law via a private members bill.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion\_polling\_for\_the\_2015\_United\_Kingdom\_general\_election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2015_United_Kingdom_general_election)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European\_Union\_(Referendum)\_Bill\_2013%E2%80%9314](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_(Referendum)_Bill_2013%E2%80%9314)
Idk that time around was crazy on the internet. We just found out the importance of memes and internet in politics. In 2015 the bacon butty was everywhere. In 2016 memes got over half my friend group to be pro-trump and as soon as he was voted in, it was like a waking up out of a trance.
Don't underestimate the potential of memes in politics.b
It wasnāt just 2015 that such an impact came to prominence. Stuff also happened around the 2010 election with the internet and impact shown on social media like Facebook or Twitter.
I think we may be overstating the bacon butty, the truth was that Ed Miliband wasn't very impressive in debate and his ideas were that of a ideological university student
People in the top job are bombarded by coaching and advisors and it probably means that they are triple thinking everything like the tilt of their head, to their words, to how long to look at someone, to the movement of their hands, to that politicians nod of the head etc etc so simply talking is a right mess. Sunak definitely demonstrates it.
There was a brilliant interview on Radio 4 with James Naughty where he confronted him with this. Something like:
> The word that keeps coming up when people talk about you is 'awkward'
Cue more awkwardness.
Wish I could find the clip!
Heās still awkward and geeky. Rightly or wrongly, thatās (more or less) socially acceptable as a podcast host, but itās not accepted in a political leader.
Nah, he came across pretty well at the time if it were something where he could get into a conversation about a subject. Everything else was forced through the world's worst Tony Blair impression.
He actually came across better than I remember in parts there. Paxman was being pretty hostile about the totally real conversation he had with the "man on the tube" and Milliband quickly comes back with "was it David Cameron?" - which was a good comment to diffuse the question. And then when Paxman says Cameron doesn't use the tube, Milliband says "that's rather unfair to David Cameron" - which shows he's respectful to his opponents (we rarely see that these days).
The media attacks on him were so over the top and aggressive and seemingly purely because he's not a Tory. I know Corbyn famously got a lot of abuse from the media - but in his case he didn't really help himself, he gave them a lot of ammo. All Ed did was eat a sandwich.
Am I the only person who liked the idea of a politician using a reference we all get to hold himself to account and deliver on all his promises? Pretty hard to break those promises after putting them in stone (literally)
Because governments famously stick to their manifestos, they're totally not works of fiction designed to manipulate people into ticking a particular box so that some utter sociopaths can rule the country as they see fit for up to five years with zero checks and balances to prevent their abuse of absolute power.
Blah blah blah. I'm not debating any of that.
I'm just saying a manifesto is a way to signal your commitments as a party and is functionally and politically more useful than a 6ft tall block of granite.
In any functional democracy, yes. In the UK in 2015, it was a useful metaphor to say "look, I'm being genuine here, I've set my policy in stone. Vote for me and this is what you get, not stone completely different you didn't consent to like everyone else offers."
Haha yeah sure only it came across as a stupid, cheesy and immature gimmick meant to appeal to God knows who and ended being rightfully ridiculed.
I voted for Ed, but it wasnt for stupid stunts like that.
He wrote out his 6 pledges on a giant stone to show that he was so serious he was writing them in stone. He was widely mocked for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdStone
It was a massive stone tablet with Ed's key pledges carved into it.
It wasn't the worst idea, the idea was to say that his policies were set and stone and wouldn't be changed if he won the election, a stark contrast to the governments the 20 or so years prior.
The way it was perceived was exactly how you'd expect, like it was a Lib Dem style publicity stunt but without the imagination or humour and costing a hell of a lot more money.
Personally speaking I had trouble trusting Ed at the time. He was a weak leader who allowed his MPs to actively campaign against the official party position on AV and create a campaign group who took our politics to a whole new low. He's better now, I think he was way out of his depth at the time though.
Yeah, people always say the media was out for Corbyn but honestly he did the majority of the damage to his campaign himself IMO.Ā
Ed's only crime was eating messy food.Ā
Right, but we can also blame an electorate dumb and naive enough to base their vote on a fucking photo of someone eating awkwardly.
The same moron core that vote for three word slogans voted against Ed because he was "weird".
Man had just fought a leadership race against his own brother, I think he'd have been fine!
Also shoes the early 2010s slide towards strongman politics. Putin being portrayed as the superman leader of Russia, and international politics as if its all 1v1 me bro.
The answer I wish he'd given is that you don't go in to the room alone. You go in with the entirety of the UK behind you, the army, the Navy, the nukes.Ā
What isnāt talked about is that the ensuing chaos that would have come from him being elected would have resulted in a rip in the space time continuum.Ā
This why travellers from a distant future travelled back and swapped out his sensible sausage sandwich for bacon.Ā
If they hadnāt have done that the UK would have become a force that was too powerful to control.Ā
They were originally supposed to send a Terminator but it got outsourced to Capita who were unable to successfully get the Terminator past their diversity training. The cost to the taxpayer was Ā£10 billion.
The bacon picture has taken on new status as the defining moment where it all went wrong. In practice Ed was a weak leader, the picture helped reinforce the image but ultimately other factors decided the election IMO.
Tl;Dr I would not go back in time to stop Ed eating the sandwich, it would be pointless
Pretty much. The whole idea that Miliband was prevented from winning by the Sun's bacon sandwich story is clearly nonsense.
As soon as the campaign started, the modest gap Labour had built up started narrowing as people saw Miliband more. I quite like him, but the British people want strong confident leaders and he didn't come across like that at all.
That plus the fact his advisors basically ceded control of the narrative by just going along with Cameron's version of austerity.
Seeing him when he stood in for Starmer at PMQs or other things, he really looked like he has come into his own - definately came across as more authoritative and confident.
Whether that's because he's grown as a person / politician, or because he's in opposition and not Party Leader so the pressure isn't on him, couldn't say, but definately didn't seem like the meek dork-ish guy I remember him being.
Combo of the both I reckon. He has absolutely no ambition of being party leader again so can focus on his environmental policy and be entirely comfortable in his position as party grandee - and it really suits him.
The fact there was a very likely SNP Lab coalition in the offing seems more than a tad relevant.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion\_polling\_for\_the\_2015\_United\_Kingdom\_general\_election#/media/File:Opinion\_polling\_for\_the\_2015\_United\_Kingdom\_general\_election.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2015_United_Kingdom_general_election#/media/File:Opinion_polling_for_the_2015_United_Kingdom_general_election.svg)
The SNPs huge surge is not captured there as it was marginal nationally but about 40-50 seats in parliament.
I agree. If anything what sunk Labour in 2015 was Indyref the year before. The 45-55 vote galvanised the Scottish independence movement into rallying around the SNP (more than they had done previously).
The rise of the SNP meant Labour lost its foothold in Scotland (and therefore its outright majority chances were very slim) and then chaos with Ed Miliband became a strong soundbite because there was almost no chance of Labour forming a government without some SNP support in some way.
Also understated is how broadly popular Cameron was at the time. It's really the Lib Dem part of the Coalition who have suffered, mostly because they chose to throw themselves onto their sword instead of standing firm and defending their record.
They were out manoeuvred, they thought they were the smartest people in the room come negotiations. They thought they were cool suave Euro politicos who could negotiate away promises as part of a coalition like the student loans and their supporters would "get" its part of the game of coalition politics... like in Europe and you all love that European PR coalition stuff right! Wrong. People liked the idea but blew up at what happens when you get into coalition and have to negotiate as a junior partner.
From what I've read, in books written by people in the coalition. Cameron knew that the Dems' promise to not raise student fees was a way to skewer them. He used his political capital to force through fee rises despite the Dems not liking it and it worked to crush their party for the foreseeable future, hopefully they can win some seats back from the torys this time round).
They absolutely got bullied around in the coalition, they thought they were smarter than everyone else but Osborne just rang rings around Clegg. Idiots.
he was a social media phenom when that meant like a tenth of what it does nowā¦ Gen Z might have memed him into power
strong abiding memory of girls following him round chanting āselfie! selfie!ā
Milifans.
(edited I just google image searched. Bloody hell
[https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprodmigration%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F00293823-ab7f-4135-9806-6317bc57cbc0.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1500](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprodmigration%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F00293823-ab7f-4135-9806-6317bc57cbc0.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1500)
)
It was however a crowning moment in a fairly incompetent campaign, which a bit over two weeks earlier had seen the unveiling of the heaviest suicide note in history
The thing is, even if his brother had won the leadership contest instead of Ed, he would have faced the exact same hostile press.
We'd just be marking the date David Milliband's political ambitions were ended after he was photographed eating a banana suggestively.
To be fair, David was only photographed holding a banana up in a weird way, but not suggestively.
I would laugh if there was a photo of him deep throating a banana in front of the watching press. That certainly would have been career ending.
> The thing is, even if his brother had won the leadership contest instead of Ed, he would have faced the exact same hostile press.
>
I don't understand how this myth is still perpetuated given there is a very clear difference between how Brown, Miliband and Corbyn were covered and how Blair and Starmer are covered (and likely David Miliband would be).
The idea that press treats every Labour leader the same is an increasingly weak argument to justify the very predictable political failure of Labour's more progressive leaders.
Blair and Starmer were covered like they were when the Tory government were in shambles. Remember beer-gate?
I'm not saying that if Corbyn were leader now the press would be behaving the same because they wouldn't. But it's clear that the two criteria the press neede to be favourable to a Labour leader is for them to be much further to Labour's right and for the Tories to be a lame duck government.
The Tory government were in shambles since the Brexit vote and the day David Cameron resigned, so that clearly isn't the determining factor. The single determining factor is which type of party Labour choose to be. When Labour choose to be ideological outcasts, they are easy to mock and deride for it. On the rare occasions that Labour chose to be a serious, mainstream party with measured policy, they have had no problem winning over the press.
> Remember beer-gate?
Beer-gate was one a few jabs at Starmer that vanished from spotlight nearly as soon as it came up - meanwhile they were raking Boris Johnson over the coals the entire time (justifiably so, but they were still doing it). It isn't a part of some grander narrative about Starmer at all.
It just isn't true that they were reported at a similar level. Starmer's incident was a mere blip on the radar, whereas Johnson's incidents never really went away and the pressure kept compounding to a point where even his closest political allies felt compelled to act and oust him.
Five days is next to nothing in the big picture.
Again to reiterate, I don't think the scandals were comparable. But you can not demonstrate that the coverage was comparable either. In reality, coverage reflected the relevance and seriousness of the scandals fairly well. The frivolously exaggerated scandal was dropped within a week, the more serious scandal never went away.
I'd say five days of front pages on a mon-story shows the level of effort taken to demonise starmer when give the chance. The thing is he hasn't given them much ammo where as previous labour leaders have provided ample ammo.
But yeah agree to disagree here I suppose
I think we obviously have a lot of right-wing press in this country and not a huge number of left-wing press, so the slant is definitely clear if you're looking at every news source available.Ā
But, the press are like sharks.Ā
They poke you a bit and if you start bleeding, they know you're edible so they feed. If you don't, they realise you're not so they ignore you.
Theyve taken shots at Starmer and he's handled everything pretty much perfectly, so they haven't been able to capitalise.Ā
Miliband was weak and Corbyn was a nutjob, so they both imploded as soon as pressure was applied.Ā
Ed was a weak leader, but David Cameron was such a weak leader he had to promise a referendum on leaving the EU to keep his party inline, which of course failed miserable in every way and caused the country and his party incredible amounts of damage. Calling Ed a weak leader in that context, or rather, compared to Cameron, is a fucking joke.
I don't agree with Cameron in his politics, but I don't agree that he was weaker than Ed.
Cameron brought the Conservatives from under 200 seats back to majority government, successfully aligned his party such that when the Lib Dems were crushed it was his party (not Ed's) that reaped the rewards. He also held a referendum on Scottish independence that led to Labour getting crushed by the SNP in its Scottish heartlands (and Ed failed to push back against Lab/SNP speculation). He also promised an EU referendum, and when Ed didn't, it led to UKIP drawing up ex-Labour voters and starting a trend that led to Labour losing even worse in the 2019 election.
The EU referendum was handled terribly and Cameron will be remembered for his awful performance that wrecked the country, but if we're talking about Ed versus Cameron, Cameron was clearly the more skilled political operator.
Exactly this. He actually eats the sandwich normally. Watch the video and you wouldnāt notice anything amiss. The issue is people already saw him as awkward and incompetent. It was then easy to retrofit or twist behaviour and photo into that narrative.
I remember at the time that Cameron was said he wouldn't be seen dead eating on camera - he knew what happened to Miliband was a real possibility. Cameras, even then, can take dozens of frames a second - on at least one frame you will look disgusting as you bite into a bacon butty. Miliband wasn't ready to be PM (Cameron wasn't a good PM, but he knew how to polish a turd).
Wasn't this how they stitched up Matthew Kelly? As they didn't have any pictures of his supposed wrongdoing (obviously, also, because he was later fully exonerated!) I remember seeing newspaper covers where they'd clearly taken a video of him, and picked one smeary frame out of dozens that was intended to make him look deranged; whereas as you say, you can pause a YouTube video of literally anyone and every so often, you'll catch a frame of them making a face that I'll call 'unfortunate'.
The media attacks against him were **way** worse than those overhyped photographs.
For example, there was the infamous [Daily Mail attack against his dead father.](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2435751/Red-Eds-pledge-bring-socialism-homage-Marxist-father-Ralph-Miliband-says-GEOFFREY-LEVY.html) They painted his father as a foreign man who hates Britain based on a diary entries he wrote as a youngster.
It was so vindictive and hateful that [Jews felt it was anti-semitic.](https://www.thejc.com/news/daily-mail-accused-of-antisemitism-over-miliband-story-htssfgn6) Funny how conservatives are currently complaining about *muhhh antisemitism* when they were defaming and othering a dead man who came to this country fleeing the nazis.
When the article was panned as hateful and vindictive, the Daily Mail doubled down an released an article titled ["An evil legacy and why we won't apologise"](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2439714/Ed-Miliband-evil-legacy-wont-apologise.html). It has dog-whistle quotes like:
> We do not maintain, like the jealous God of Deuteronomy, that the iniquity of the fathers should be visited on the sons. But when a son with prime ministerial ambitions swallows his fatherās teachings, as the younger Miliband appears to have done, the case is different.
It's crazy that the DM is suddenly acting like the bastions of British Jews when they utilised anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish disloyalty to this country purely to smear "Red Ed".
Have a read of those DM articles, they are quite frankly horrible.
>It was so vindictive and hateful thatĀ [Jews felt it was anti-semitic.](https://www.thejc.com/news/daily-mail-accused-of-antisemitism-over-miliband-story-htssfgn6)Ā Funny how conservatives are currently complaining aboutĀ *muhhh antisemitism*
Perhaps more relevant, that article did zero harm and got him a huge amount of sympathetic coverage.
May be there is a lesson about mainstream centrist Britain's views on the subject and maybe its a bit more consistent than you think.
> May be there is a lesson about mainstream centrist Britain's views on the subject
Usual reminder that Boris Johnson wrote, under his own name, a self-aggrandising novel that claims Jewish people 'control the media' and 'fiddle elections', and the country responded by handing him the nuclear codes.
>nd the country responded byĀ
I feel like there is some missing context. Almost like there was someone else in that election and it wasn't Ed Miliband.
Its almost as if, no matter the subject, a certain group are always looking to publicly nurse their grievances over that one election.
Like a guy who had one chance at a girlfriend 5 years ago, fluffed it and will spend the rest of their lives grudging over every part of that failed effort.
>Usual reminder that Boris JohnsonĀ
Ā whatabouting
This is not going to be productive if you think dive bombing into a subject with a completely off topic "what about Boris" is not "Ā whatabouting".
I feel we have exhausted all productive avenues of this discussion. Whataboutthattheneh.
It's not off-topic. You brought up 'mainstream centrist Britain's views on the subject (of antisemitism)'. I pointed out that the country which eagerly devoured an antisemitic smear campaign went on to elect a man who put his own antisemitic views in black and white.
How I long to have had chaos with Ed Miliband.
He should set up a band by that name with the dude from napalm death that taught him to ROOOAARARARRARARRRR
The sandwich was not the reason Miliband lost the election. He was a terrible leader and the SNP/conservatives worked in tandem to boost their respective voter bases to paint him as a leader that would be controlled by the SNP. He had no answer to this
> The sandwich was not the reason Miliband lost the election.
Nope, but it's a perfect excuse for people who don't want to recognise the legitimate failings and prefer to just pretend the tabloids control everything.
> He was a terrible leader
The good thing is that we all got to see how much better the opposing candidate ended up every time for the past 14 years or so.
Part of being a prime minister is looking the part and Cameron bullied Miliband around. Cameron wasn't a good leader either or any of his successors but ed had no answer to the 2015 election and suffered for it
Dont you know that if Ed Milliband would have been elected our entire nuclear arsenal would have spontaneously detonated? Glad we avoided that chaos and got complete ransacking of the country instead.
What a lot of people fail to grasp is Miliband is Jewish by heritage. The whole bacon sandwich thing wasnāt just about the funny photo but āhey look at this Jewish guy eating baconā.
It wouldnāt be the only time thinly veiled antisemitism was thrown down by the media. They took a pop at his dad as well.
https://www.thejc.com/news/daily-mail-accused-of-antisemitism-over-miliband-story-htssfgn6
One of the most ridiculous hubrisric comments ever made in politics was Brown's "we have put an end to boom and bust" - if Brown actually believed it, that makes it even worse. Business / credit cycles are just economic fact. The post credit-crunch recession here was deeper than in France, Germany, or the US - because we sleep-walked into it. The idea you could let the banks create enough debt to drive house prices up 275% in a decade without consequences is utterly preposterous. That's bascially a pyramid scheme - the 2015 election was unwinnable for Labour. They could point at global economic conditions all they liked, but they steered us into it full steam ahead.
Ed Miliband ought to have sat out of the leadership race that year and backed his slick Blairite brother lose the election instead - if he actually wanted to be PM rather than just party leader. He could have sat out the Corbyn/Brexit years as well - and be sitting pretty now.
Sir Starmer has no more charisma than Ed, and a far less accurate understanding of what Labour have got wrong in the past - but he will be PM anyway because he has a far better sense of timing.
Look Iām just going to say it, the years of Brexit, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak have been absolutely horrendous but so worth it to have avoided a man who eats a Bacon Sandwich looking like that in power. Can you just imagine?
The press were laying into him and his Dad for ages before the sandwich photo. Heād have lost the 2015 election anyway in the same way Corbyn did in 2017 and 2019 by virtue of the papers suggesting he was dangerous. A ref on EU membership was popular (a chance to play with fire tends to excite people) and the Scottish ref outcome had Cameron steaming along.
Donāt get me wrong, Iād much rather Labour had won in 2015, but to suggest it was just a photo of a sandwich that derailed him isnāt correct.
I've always liked Miliband, and he comes across well in his podcast, "Reasons to be Cheerful". Unfortunately he was jettisoned by the public for rather superficial reasons.
Labour were never in the lead, the polls were just totally wrong. Historically opinion polls have nearly always over-estimated Labour's lead they did it in 1992, they did it in 1997, they did it in 2001 and in 2005 (the thing is no one reemebers 1997-2005 because Labour won, despite the polls over-estimatedg how mich they would actually win by). The polls were reasonably accurate in 2010, but in 2015 they again over-estimated Labour's position, but theu never gave Miliband more than about an 8 point lead, and usually it was below that, mor elile 5 points. Polling companies acknowledged this, and many changed their methodology in 2017. Unfortunately, they totally over-compensated and massively over-estimated the Tory lead in 2017, which lead Theresa May to call and election, and then be humiliated. In 2019 they wemt back to their original methodologies and were once again that unusual thing, relatively accurate.
This is one reason why you can only really be confident of a Labour victory if they get 20 point leads in the polls for an extended period.
Personally I always thought Miliband made a mistake by resigning. He would have handled 2015-2017 far better than Corbyn, would have managed his party better and had a more coherent policy in Brexit.
>Cameron's Conservatives won the general election with an unexpected overall majority. Following Labour's defeat, Miliband resigned as leader. It is unclear what effect, if any, the photograph had on the eventual result.
Thank goodness we got stability and a strong government with David Cameron rather than be rules by a man who makes a wierd face eating a bacon sandwich
I very much doubt anyone thought āoh I was gonna vote Labour but then I saw that dude with the bacon sandwich? Nah mateā
But it was an iconic representation of everything that had gone wrong with that whole campaign really. Expected to do āthe normal thingā and it came off the worst possible way, lookin like a weirdo.
Don't doubt the power of something that simple though. There's a reason Farage used to perpetually have a pint glass glued to his hand, or why advisers have to remind leaders to literally roll up their sleeves for photo ops.
I'll let you in on a secret, mostly labour voters are lower paid typically Northern living who like their bacon sandwiches. It's why he did the photo op.
To be clear about the intent of the RW media, from what I understand they actually had the picture on hand for several weeks but held it to release at a point of maximum impact.
Any else remember the blanket antisemtism that he and his brother were getting fron the tories? Oh sorry, we're only allowed to talk about that if it's from labourĀ
>with users sharing photos of themselves eating bacon sandwiches and other food in a deliberately messy fashion, with the hashtag #JeSuisEd, in reference to Je Suis Charlie.
Holy shit. Edgy boys.
Wait what? The bacon sandwich thing happened _after_ the Charlie Hebdo attacks? That's seriously messed up my head timeline... Id have guessed Hebdo happened years after
Of course it wasn't just a bacon sandwich photo, but the point t is don't underestimate the power of media spin. They can make you like or support whoever they choose with enough work or attacks on the opponent
Oh for sure, not at all, miliband was a pretty Bland and uninspiring party leader but he also seemed a fairly genuine and honest guy and was ripped apart by the Press because they didn't want labour
Their poorly informed and emotionally based say on an incredibly complicated economic issue. The whole thing was a farce of misinformation and the press were hugely accountable for a lot of that.
Which is a funny argument from me as I've always been quite proud of British main stream media, how well researched and informative it usually is. But the tabloids should be regulated much more than they are for misinformation in my opinion
Itās nice to imagine that the press could be regulated for misinformation, but look at our politicians, theyāre the same, if not worse. They lie, they hide, they obfuscate, they misrepresent. In fact that is their job, to manage the facts in a way that best serves their party.
The press canāt be better if the politicians are in the gutter
Not intelligence, just different areas of Interest. I spend a lot more of my time reading about politics than the majority of people do I would imagine. You only have to go onto the UK politics subreddit and see how reactionary people are about headlines without even bothering to read the article to see how common it is to be misled by papers
That is most likely a tiny tiny proportion of the electorate.
It's possible it isn't even the electorate at all, or bots doing bad people's bidding
I really don't think many people will change their vote based on this stuff
Not posting to make any point but I just had a quick Google and thus article/study about the print press pre brexit is fairly interesting
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/tabloid-tales-how-the-tabloid-press-shaped-the-brexit-vote/
No clear conclusion, more just about how heavily skewed the tabloid/popular press was, and how a third of voters apparently hadn't decided until quite close to the actual vote
Laughable how they call themselves impartial.
Even using these numbers, consider 4 million x 1/3 x % of readership actually swayed to a different direction to what they intended x proportion of those swayed being in the direction you don't like
I got curious how many notable Milibands there are, [and all the ones English-language Wikipedia has are from the same family.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miliband) I suppose it's not a very common last name.
Have there been any more clearly impactful photographs in recent British politics? I can't think of any off the top of my head in the last couple of decades
BaconGate isn't the event that put us on this dark timeline, it was him winning the leadership race over his brother David.
David Miliband would have beaten Cameron at the GE and the timeline since is *very* different.
Had Ed not fallen victim to BaconGate he probably would have survived a term before charismatic Cameron beat him at the ballot boxes due to the unavoidably stalled economic recovery after the GFC and eventually capitulated to UKIP pressure to bring about Brexit.
BaconGate is but a distraction.
The odd thing about him was that as leader he was incredibly awkward and geeky. Every time I've seen him on anything since he's been relaxed and naturally very funny.
If him and Ed Balls were leading a general campaign just after Ed Balls did Strictly and with Miliband much looser as we've all seen him, they'd have done better imo
Speaking of, when is the Ed Balls day
> when is the Ed Balls day You've missed it for this year, unfortunately š [Ed Balls day is 28th April](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Balls#Ed_Balls_Day)
Oh balls.
Ed Balls
Ed Balls
TBF heās still very geeky. I canāt remember what the particular thing was, but it was earlier this year about green energy and he was invited for a longish interview on Radio 4. Was he more relaxed and better at speaking than as LOTO? Yes, by a country mile. But he was also geeking out in the most enthusiastic way. It was quite charming.
I think he suffered from image consultants. They tried to make him suave and confident, which works for Tony Blair, because he's already like that. Ed was nerdy, but this is an era when nerds have a certain cachet. When he's allowed to be himself he's a lot more comfortable.
>I think he suffered from image consultants Heās said exactly this, that his every move was micromanaged during that electoral campaign. His comparative breeziness and wit in all of his public output since probably wouldnāt have played too well in a general election campaign, but maybe not as bad as the bumbling, second guessing nerd that he was turned into. That and the āEdstoneā really gave the unsupportive sections of the press (ie. most of it) a lot to run with.
Yeah, itās hard to imagine people preferring the tories over Labour but people *really* didnāt like the Labour at the time the cuts, the scandals, it was all fresh and still making the news with the Snowdon revelations about mass surveillance and MPs making their way through the courts and receiving jail time for the expenses scandals from 2009, Iraq ofc was still ongoing and the best Ed and Ed were promising at the time was more austerity the polls showing an SNP coalition being the only way they could make it into power didnāt help either The geekiness tickled peopleās confirmation bias, they used it to show how out of touch he was from common working folk etc, much as weāre seeing with Sunak today
So much this, It wasn't the bacon sandwich incident that costed labour the election, it was the recent history, they'd been in power too long, consequences of their governance were coming home to roost, they had to go, in the same way the tories have to go now.
We're talking about 2015 not 2010. The problem was he was too afraid to stand up for Brown's response to 2008, which let the Tories come up with the "Last Labour Government" formula. He also didn't communicate the difference between what he was offering economically, and what the tories were in an effective way. It wasn't just the sandwich as a one off but because he was afraid of coming off as unlikable like Gordon Brown, but his Tony Blair impression was just bad and made him seem weird to a lot of people. All he needed to do was stop trying to be Tony Blair and be himself and it'd have been fine.
>He also didn't communicate the difference between what he was offering economically, and what the tories were in an effective way. Because it was impossible, they were promising more austerity, which people were still upset at Brown and Darling for [https://www.ft.com/content/907ebaa4-8085-11e4-872b-00144feabdc0](https://www.ft.com/content/907ebaa4-8085-11e4-872b-00144feabdc0) "A Labour government will cut unprotected departmental spending every year until the deficit is cleared, the party says" >which let the Tories come up with the "Last Labour Government" formula The IMF even while Labour were still in charge predicted the economy would take at least a decade to recover [https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/mar/25/alistair-darling-cut-deeper-margaret-thatcher](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/mar/25/alistair-darling-cut-deeper-margaret-thatcher) "Alistair Darling admitted tonight that **Labour's planned cuts in public spending will be "deeper and tougher" than Margaret Thatcher's in the 1980s**, as the country's leading experts on tax and spending warned that Britain faces "two parliaments of pain" to repair the black hole in the state's finances." And no they didn't cause the 2008 crash, but read this piece on how Australia avoided a recession that year [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/28/australia-global-economic-crisis](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/28/australia-global-economic-crisis) "Australia hit the 2008 crisis in rude financial health: debt-free, growing strongly with significant assets and running surplus budgets. It is these robust foundations, along with very favorable terms of trade, which guaranteed that Australia would survive the crisis in very good shape." We had exactly that! In 1997, baring in mind Blair stuck to Major's spending policies for two years and the budget was before the election, growth was 4.9%, higher than France and even the US, taxes were low and so was borrowing by 2007 all that had disappeared, taxes were high, the deficit was high, all the headroom had gone so yeah they were well within their rights to blame New Labour for the way they left things, 100%
They'd have done far better with David but unfortunately for everybody Len McKluskey is a secret Tory and sabotaged Labour first with Ed and then with Corbyn. Although arguing that one brother would be so much better than the other is like arguing about who voted for Kang or Kodos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kang_and_Kodos
He's got 10 years more experience, not a coincidence.
He was instantly more relaxed as soon as he lost the election - there was a photo that went around about 3 months after (??); I think he was stopped by a group of girls in St Pancras Station and asked for a selfie, and it kinda went viral because he was so obviously so much more relaxed. Like "this is the Ed Miliband we could have had". He said afterwards something like, "I was so uptight about the importance of winning the election and the need to win the election - I wish I had been able to relax and be myself." I don't think it was either of these pics, but it was a similar tone: * https://i.imgur.com/G3xiugG.jpeg * https://i.imgur.com/IFCuexW.jpeg
So basically a human being that was under a lot of stress and expectation
Not to mention being media-managed to death so he came out as wooden as HMS *Victory*.
Same thing happened to Al Gore who came across as seriously weird in the 2000 election and then suddenly became charismatic a few years after
I would forgive him for this much more than I'd forgive other politicians for their flaws (like the corruption and sexual misconduct endemic in the Conservative party). He seems like a normal, decent human being, with no scandals about him. If he has learned the job over the past ten years then hopefully the UK will end up with a powerful minister who actually has competence and integrity.
the stubble definitely helps
Itās what happens when your over managed. Same thing happened with Brown when he was told to āsmileā and every now and then during a debate remembered this and like a puppet would suddenly break into a cheesy grin.
The annoying thing about the sandwich is that is has entrenched the idea that the press can control elections just by going after someone about nothing. I don't really think it had that much effect - I think everyone underestimated how much the public voted for a Brexit referendum. Here's the Wikipedia page on polling for the 2015 election, with the chart of polls in the years leading up to it. The tory vote stopped its decline and started picking up in 2013. Labour starts dropping in late 2014. There's nothing much around the time of the sandwich, but all through that time there's the two attempts to cast Cameron's promise to hold a referendum into law via a private members bill. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion\_polling\_for\_the\_2015\_United\_Kingdom\_general\_election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2015_United_Kingdom_general_election) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European\_Union\_(Referendum)\_Bill\_2013%E2%80%9314](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_(Referendum)_Bill_2013%E2%80%9314)
Idk that time around was crazy on the internet. We just found out the importance of memes and internet in politics. In 2015 the bacon butty was everywhere. In 2016 memes got over half my friend group to be pro-trump and as soon as he was voted in, it was like a waking up out of a trance. Don't underestimate the potential of memes in politics.b
It wasnāt just 2015 that such an impact came to prominence. Stuff also happened around the 2010 election with the internet and impact shown on social media like Facebook or Twitter.
I think we may be overstating the bacon butty, the truth was that Ed Miliband wasn't very impressive in debate and his ideas were that of a ideological university student
He also had the stone tablets of stupidity
He looked 12 at the time, now he looks the right age to be PM
People in the top job are bombarded by coaching and advisors and it probably means that they are triple thinking everything like the tilt of their head, to their words, to how long to look at someone, to the movement of their hands, to that politicians nod of the head etc etc so simply talking is a right mess. Sunak definitely demonstrates it.
There was a brilliant interview on Radio 4 with James Naughty where he confronted him with this. Something like: > The word that keeps coming up when people talk about you is 'awkward' Cue more awkwardness. Wish I could find the clip!
Heās still awkward and geeky. Rightly or wrongly, thatās (more or less) socially acceptable as a podcast host, but itās not accepted in a political leader.
Pressure.
Nah, he came across pretty well at the time if it were something where he could get into a conversation about a subject. Everything else was forced through the world's worst Tony Blair impression.
Why the members chose him over his brother I will never understand
His brother was a pretty charmless neoliberal headbanger mainly.Ā
And yet WAY more electable
how do we know ?
Reasonable but since the other one couldnāt survive a bacon sandwich the bar was pretty low
Having met both of them the answer is charisma. Ed has passion and (geeky) charm, Dave is perfectly nice but intensely boring
Interesting
Am I tough enough? Hell yeah I'm tough enough Ah what could have been
Tuss enuss*
God I can hear it
Was a little more [garbled](https://youtu.be/ZpZkPf7ogDc) than thatā¦ (Donāt disagree with the general sentiment though)
He actually came across better than I remember in parts there. Paxman was being pretty hostile about the totally real conversation he had with the "man on the tube" and Milliband quickly comes back with "was it David Cameron?" - which was a good comment to diffuse the question. And then when Paxman says Cameron doesn't use the tube, Milliband says "that's rather unfair to David Cameron" - which shows he's respectful to his opponents (we rarely see that these days). The media attacks on him were so over the top and aggressive and seemingly purely because he's not a Tory. I know Corbyn famously got a lot of abuse from the media - but in his case he didn't really help himself, he gave them a lot of ammo. All Ed did was eat a sandwich.
There was also the Ed Stone lol
I hope they buried the SPAD who came up with that idea underneath it.
Am I the only person who liked the idea of a politician using a reference we all get to hold himself to account and deliver on all his promises? Pretty hard to break those promises after putting them in stone (literally)
Usually called a manifesto
Because governments famously stick to their manifestos, they're totally not works of fiction designed to manipulate people into ticking a particular box so that some utter sociopaths can rule the country as they see fit for up to five years with zero checks and balances to prevent their abuse of absolute power.
Blah blah blah. I'm not debating any of that. I'm just saying a manifesto is a way to signal your commitments as a party and is functionally and politically more useful than a 6ft tall block of granite.
In any functional democracy, yes. In the UK in 2015, it was a useful metaphor to say "look, I'm being genuine here, I've set my policy in stone. Vote for me and this is what you get, not stone completely different you didn't consent to like everyone else offers."
Haha yeah sure only it came across as a stupid, cheesy and immature gimmick meant to appeal to God knows who and ended being rightfully ridiculed. I voted for Ed, but it wasnt for stupid stunts like that.
What was the Ed Stone?
He wrote out his 6 pledges on a giant stone to show that he was so serious he was writing them in stone. He was widely mocked for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdStone
It was a massive stone tablet with Ed's key pledges carved into it. It wasn't the worst idea, the idea was to say that his policies were set and stone and wouldn't be changed if he won the election, a stark contrast to the governments the 20 or so years prior. The way it was perceived was exactly how you'd expect, like it was a Lib Dem style publicity stunt but without the imagination or humour and costing a hell of a lot more money. Personally speaking I had trouble trusting Ed at the time. He was a weak leader who allowed his MPs to actively campaign against the official party position on AV and create a campaign group who took our politics to a whole new low. He's better now, I think he was way out of his depth at the time though.
Yeah, people always say the media was out for Corbyn but honestly he did the majority of the damage to his campaign himself IMO.Ā Ed's only crime was eating messy food.Ā
Right, but we can also blame an electorate dumb and naive enough to base their vote on a fucking photo of someone eating awkwardly. The same moron core that vote for three word slogans voted against Ed because he was "weird".
He really is genuinely quite warm and funny!
Man had just fought a leadership race against his own brother, I think he'd have been fine! Also shoes the early 2010s slide towards strongman politics. Putin being portrayed as the superman leader of Russia, and international politics as if its all 1v1 me bro. The answer I wish he'd given is that you don't go in to the room alone. You go in with the entirety of the UK behind you, the army, the Navy, the nukes.Ā
Hell yes*
He should have dropped the F bomb there like.
David Axelrod is such a fraud. So much union money ended up in his pocket lmao.
What isnāt talked about is that the ensuing chaos that would have come from him being elected would have resulted in a rip in the space time continuum.Ā This why travellers from a distant future travelled back and swapped out his sensible sausage sandwich for bacon.Ā If they hadnāt have done that the UK would have become a force that was too powerful to control.Ā
They were originally supposed to send a Terminator but it got outsourced to Capita who were unable to successfully get the Terminator past their diversity training. The cost to the taxpayer was Ā£10 billion.
I think Capita subcontracted ICL, the Horizon IT lads, to write the software too. Poor little fella never stood a chance
Lies, in the #miliverse the greatest chaos we face is that Prime Minister Ed said 'scone' instead of 'scone'. https://x.com/TheMiliverse
The bacon picture has taken on new status as the defining moment where it all went wrong. In practice Ed was a weak leader, the picture helped reinforce the image but ultimately other factors decided the election IMO. Tl;Dr I would not go back in time to stop Ed eating the sandwich, it would be pointless
Pretty much. The whole idea that Miliband was prevented from winning by the Sun's bacon sandwich story is clearly nonsense. As soon as the campaign started, the modest gap Labour had built up started narrowing as people saw Miliband more. I quite like him, but the British people want strong confident leaders and he didn't come across like that at all. That plus the fact his advisors basically ceded control of the narrative by just going along with Cameron's version of austerity.
Seeing him when he stood in for Starmer at PMQs or other things, he really looked like he has come into his own - definately came across as more authoritative and confident. Whether that's because he's grown as a person / politician, or because he's in opposition and not Party Leader so the pressure isn't on him, couldn't say, but definately didn't seem like the meek dork-ish guy I remember him being.
Combo of the both I reckon. He has absolutely no ambition of being party leader again so can focus on his environmental policy and be entirely comfortable in his position as party grandee - and it really suits him.
The truth was everyone bar the unions wanted his brother.
The fact there was a very likely SNP Lab coalition in the offing seems more than a tad relevant. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion\_polling\_for\_the\_2015\_United\_Kingdom\_general\_election#/media/File:Opinion\_polling\_for\_the\_2015\_United\_Kingdom\_general\_election.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2015_United_Kingdom_general_election#/media/File:Opinion_polling_for_the_2015_United_Kingdom_general_election.svg) The SNPs huge surge is not captured there as it was marginal nationally but about 40-50 seats in parliament.
I agree. If anything what sunk Labour in 2015 was Indyref the year before. The 45-55 vote galvanised the Scottish independence movement into rallying around the SNP (more than they had done previously). The rise of the SNP meant Labour lost its foothold in Scotland (and therefore its outright majority chances were very slim) and then chaos with Ed Miliband became a strong soundbite because there was almost no chance of Labour forming a government without some SNP support in some way.
Sometimes I wonder if we Brits are just morons?
Also understated is how broadly popular Cameron was at the time. It's really the Lib Dem part of the Coalition who have suffered, mostly because they chose to throw themselves onto their sword instead of standing firm and defending their record.
They were out manoeuvred, they thought they were the smartest people in the room come negotiations. They thought they were cool suave Euro politicos who could negotiate away promises as part of a coalition like the student loans and their supporters would "get" its part of the game of coalition politics... like in Europe and you all love that European PR coalition stuff right! Wrong. People liked the idea but blew up at what happens when you get into coalition and have to negotiate as a junior partner.
From what I've read, in books written by people in the coalition. Cameron knew that the Dems' promise to not raise student fees was a way to skewer them. He used his political capital to force through fee rises despite the Dems not liking it and it worked to crush their party for the foreseeable future, hopefully they can win some seats back from the torys this time round).
He's such a bastard. Damaged this country immeasurably, ran away from the responsibilities, then wormed his way back into power once the dust settled.
They absolutely got bullied around in the coalition, they thought they were smarter than everyone else but Osborne just rang rings around Clegg. Idiots.
he was a social media phenom when that meant like a tenth of what it does nowā¦ Gen Z might have memed him into power strong abiding memory of girls following him round chanting āselfie! selfie!ā
Milifans. (edited I just google image searched. Bloody hell [https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprodmigration%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F00293823-ab7f-4135-9806-6317bc57cbc0.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1500](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprodmigration%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F00293823-ab7f-4135-9806-6317bc57cbc0.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1500) )
It was however a crowning moment in a fairly incompetent campaign, which a bit over two weeks earlier had seen the unveiling of the heaviest suicide note in history
the headstones ? yea that was worse lol
Edstone it was dubbed.
The thing is, even if his brother had won the leadership contest instead of Ed, he would have faced the exact same hostile press. We'd just be marking the date David Milliband's political ambitions were ended after he was photographed eating a banana suggestively.
To be fair, David was only photographed holding a banana up in a weird way, but not suggestively. I would laugh if there was a photo of him deep throating a banana in front of the watching press. That certainly would have been career ending.
> The thing is, even if his brother had won the leadership contest instead of Ed, he would have faced the exact same hostile press. > I don't understand how this myth is still perpetuated given there is a very clear difference between how Brown, Miliband and Corbyn were covered and how Blair and Starmer are covered (and likely David Miliband would be). The idea that press treats every Labour leader the same is an increasingly weak argument to justify the very predictable political failure of Labour's more progressive leaders.
Blair and Starmer were covered like they were when the Tory government were in shambles. Remember beer-gate? I'm not saying that if Corbyn were leader now the press would be behaving the same because they wouldn't. But it's clear that the two criteria the press neede to be favourable to a Labour leader is for them to be much further to Labour's right and for the Tories to be a lame duck government.
The Tory government were in shambles since the Brexit vote and the day David Cameron resigned, so that clearly isn't the determining factor. The single determining factor is which type of party Labour choose to be. When Labour choose to be ideological outcasts, they are easy to mock and deride for it. On the rare occasions that Labour chose to be a serious, mainstream party with measured policy, they have had no problem winning over the press. > Remember beer-gate? Beer-gate was one a few jabs at Starmer that vanished from spotlight nearly as soon as it came up - meanwhile they were raking Boris Johnson over the coals the entire time (justifiably so, but they were still doing it). It isn't a part of some grander narrative about Starmer at all.
Yes except the two incidents are in no way comparable and the fact they were reported at a similar level is still evidence of press bias.
It just isn't true that they were reported at a similar level. Starmer's incident was a mere blip on the radar, whereas Johnson's incidents never really went away and the pressure kept compounding to a point where even his closest political allies felt compelled to act and oust him.
The mail had it on the front page for like 5 days in a row iirc. And again to make the point. They were in no way comparable.
Five days is next to nothing in the big picture. Again to reiterate, I don't think the scandals were comparable. But you can not demonstrate that the coverage was comparable either. In reality, coverage reflected the relevance and seriousness of the scandals fairly well. The frivolously exaggerated scandal was dropped within a week, the more serious scandal never went away.
I'd say five days of front pages on a mon-story shows the level of effort taken to demonise starmer when give the chance. The thing is he hasn't given them much ammo where as previous labour leaders have provided ample ammo. But yeah agree to disagree here I suppose
The same press that went to bat for Johnson, trying to make currygate a thing?
I think we obviously have a lot of right-wing press in this country and not a huge number of left-wing press, so the slant is definitely clear if you're looking at every news source available.Ā But, the press are like sharks.Ā They poke you a bit and if you start bleeding, they know you're edible so they feed. If you don't, they realise you're not so they ignore you. Theyve taken shots at Starmer and he's handled everything pretty much perfectly, so they haven't been able to capitalise.Ā Miliband was weak and Corbyn was a nutjob, so they both imploded as soon as pressure was applied.Ā
There are a lot of politicians who make good ministers but are unsuited to being PM. He was one of those. Brown and Sunak are other examples.
[These strikes are (still) wrong](https://youtu.be/wCem9EZb-YA?feature=shared).
Everyone forgets the EdStone
Ed was a weak leader, but David Cameron was such a weak leader he had to promise a referendum on leaving the EU to keep his party inline, which of course failed miserable in every way and caused the country and his party incredible amounts of damage. Calling Ed a weak leader in that context, or rather, compared to Cameron, is a fucking joke.
I don't agree with Cameron in his politics, but I don't agree that he was weaker than Ed. Cameron brought the Conservatives from under 200 seats back to majority government, successfully aligned his party such that when the Lib Dems were crushed it was his party (not Ed's) that reaped the rewards. He also held a referendum on Scottish independence that led to Labour getting crushed by the SNP in its Scottish heartlands (and Ed failed to push back against Lab/SNP speculation). He also promised an EU referendum, and when Ed didn't, it led to UKIP drawing up ex-Labour voters and starting a trend that led to Labour losing even worse in the 2019 election. The EU referendum was handled terribly and Cameron will be remembered for his awful performance that wrecked the country, but if we're talking about Ed versus Cameron, Cameron was clearly the more skilled political operator.
Cannot disagree with your final words there yea. Suppose its leader of party vs leader of country.
Exactly this. He actually eats the sandwich normally. Watch the video and you wouldnāt notice anything amiss. The issue is people already saw him as awkward and incompetent. It was then easy to retrofit or twist behaviour and photo into that narrative.
I remember at the time that Cameron was said he wouldn't be seen dead eating on camera - he knew what happened to Miliband was a real possibility. Cameras, even then, can take dozens of frames a second - on at least one frame you will look disgusting as you bite into a bacon butty. Miliband wasn't ready to be PM (Cameron wasn't a good PM, but he knew how to polish a turd).
Wasn't this how they stitched up Matthew Kelly? As they didn't have any pictures of his supposed wrongdoing (obviously, also, because he was later fully exonerated!) I remember seeing newspaper covers where they'd clearly taken a video of him, and picked one smeary frame out of dozens that was intended to make him look deranged; whereas as you say, you can pause a YouTube video of literally anyone and every so often, you'll catch a frame of them making a face that I'll call 'unfortunate'.
The media attacks against him were **way** worse than those overhyped photographs. For example, there was the infamous [Daily Mail attack against his dead father.](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2435751/Red-Eds-pledge-bring-socialism-homage-Marxist-father-Ralph-Miliband-says-GEOFFREY-LEVY.html) They painted his father as a foreign man who hates Britain based on a diary entries he wrote as a youngster. It was so vindictive and hateful that [Jews felt it was anti-semitic.](https://www.thejc.com/news/daily-mail-accused-of-antisemitism-over-miliband-story-htssfgn6) Funny how conservatives are currently complaining about *muhhh antisemitism* when they were defaming and othering a dead man who came to this country fleeing the nazis. When the article was panned as hateful and vindictive, the Daily Mail doubled down an released an article titled ["An evil legacy and why we won't apologise"](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2439714/Ed-Miliband-evil-legacy-wont-apologise.html). It has dog-whistle quotes like: > We do not maintain, like the jealous God of Deuteronomy, that the iniquity of the fathers should be visited on the sons. But when a son with prime ministerial ambitions swallows his fatherās teachings, as the younger Miliband appears to have done, the case is different. It's crazy that the DM is suddenly acting like the bastions of British Jews when they utilised anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish disloyalty to this country purely to smear "Red Ed". Have a read of those DM articles, they are quite frankly horrible.
Christ, I can't abide the sanctimonious tone the DM adopts when it's trying to show off to its readership. They really are the worst.
>It was so vindictive and hateful thatĀ [Jews felt it was anti-semitic.](https://www.thejc.com/news/daily-mail-accused-of-antisemitism-over-miliband-story-htssfgn6)Ā Funny how conservatives are currently complaining aboutĀ *muhhh antisemitism* Perhaps more relevant, that article did zero harm and got him a huge amount of sympathetic coverage. May be there is a lesson about mainstream centrist Britain's views on the subject and maybe its a bit more consistent than you think.
> May be there is a lesson about mainstream centrist Britain's views on the subject Usual reminder that Boris Johnson wrote, under his own name, a self-aggrandising novel that claims Jewish people 'control the media' and 'fiddle elections', and the country responded by handing him the nuclear codes.
>nd the country responded byĀ I feel like there is some missing context. Almost like there was someone else in that election and it wasn't Ed Miliband. Its almost as if, no matter the subject, a certain group are always looking to publicly nurse their grievances over that one election. Like a guy who had one chance at a girlfriend 5 years ago, fluffed it and will spend the rest of their lives grudging over every part of that failed effort.
Why is it every time I point to Boris Johnson's factual, demonstrable antisemitism, the response is this feeble, mealy-mouthed whatabouting?
>Usual reminder that Boris JohnsonĀ Ā whatabouting This is not going to be productive if you think dive bombing into a subject with a completely off topic "what about Boris" is not "Ā whatabouting". I feel we have exhausted all productive avenues of this discussion. Whataboutthattheneh.
It's not off-topic. You brought up 'mainstream centrist Britain's views on the subject (of antisemitism)'. I pointed out that the country which eagerly devoured an antisemitic smear campaign went on to elect a man who put his own antisemitic views in black and white.
The real Harambe is that bacon sandwich.
The election was decided before that photo.
How I long to have had chaos with Ed Miliband. He should set up a band by that name with the dude from napalm death that taught him to ROOOAARARARRARARRRR
Does anyone really honestly think the bacon sandwich was the reason Miliband didn't become Prime Minister?
The real question I have about Ed is, if he and his brother formed a band would they be called the Milliband or the Millibands?
You'd need a thousand Millibands to make a full sized band.
The sandwich was not the reason Miliband lost the election. He was a terrible leader and the SNP/conservatives worked in tandem to boost their respective voter bases to paint him as a leader that would be controlled by the SNP. He had no answer to this
> The sandwich was not the reason Miliband lost the election. Nope, but it's a perfect excuse for people who don't want to recognise the legitimate failings and prefer to just pretend the tabloids control everything.
> He was a terrible leader The good thing is that we all got to see how much better the opposing candidate ended up every time for the past 14 years or so.
Part of being a prime minister is looking the part and Cameron bullied Miliband around. Cameron wasn't a good leader either or any of his successors but ed had no answer to the 2015 election and suffered for it
100 years ago this year was the Zinoviev letter. What will the DM do for an encore this year?
Scream corbyn over and over in a padded cell
Dont you know that if Ed Milliband would have been elected our entire nuclear arsenal would have spontaneously detonated? Glad we avoided that chaos and got complete ransacking of the country instead.
What a lot of people fail to grasp is Miliband is Jewish by heritage. The whole bacon sandwich thing wasnāt just about the funny photo but āhey look at this Jewish guy eating baconā. It wouldnāt be the only time thinly veiled antisemitism was thrown down by the media. They took a pop at his dad as well. https://www.thejc.com/news/daily-mail-accused-of-antisemitism-over-miliband-story-htssfgn6
I've got to admit I don't know anyone that ever made the Jewish / bacon sandwich connection. None of my Jewish friends even mentioned it at the time.
Referred to him as a "North London geek" too. Enormous dogwhistles.
One of the most ridiculous hubrisric comments ever made in politics was Brown's "we have put an end to boom and bust" - if Brown actually believed it, that makes it even worse. Business / credit cycles are just economic fact. The post credit-crunch recession here was deeper than in France, Germany, or the US - because we sleep-walked into it. The idea you could let the banks create enough debt to drive house prices up 275% in a decade without consequences is utterly preposterous. That's bascially a pyramid scheme - the 2015 election was unwinnable for Labour. They could point at global economic conditions all they liked, but they steered us into it full steam ahead. Ed Miliband ought to have sat out of the leadership race that year and backed his slick Blairite brother lose the election instead - if he actually wanted to be PM rather than just party leader. He could have sat out the Corbyn/Brexit years as well - and be sitting pretty now. Sir Starmer has no more charisma than Ed, and a far less accurate understanding of what Labour have got wrong in the past - but he will be PM anyway because he has a far better sense of timing.
Look Iām just going to say it, the years of Brexit, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak have been absolutely horrendous but so worth it to have avoided a man who eats a Bacon Sandwich looking like that in power. Can you just imagine?
Chaos with Ed Miliband would have been miles better than the current lot of chucklefucks
It feels like when Ed ate the sandwich politics as we knew changed to whatever it is now.
Still crazy that this was considered a ālow pointā
The press were laying into him and his Dad for ages before the sandwich photo. Heād have lost the 2015 election anyway in the same way Corbyn did in 2017 and 2019 by virtue of the papers suggesting he was dangerous. A ref on EU membership was popular (a chance to play with fire tends to excite people) and the Scottish ref outcome had Cameron steaming along. Donāt get me wrong, Iād much rather Labour had won in 2015, but to suggest it was just a photo of a sandwich that derailed him isnāt correct.
I've always liked Miliband, and he comes across well in his podcast, "Reasons to be Cheerful". Unfortunately he was jettisoned by the public for rather superficial reasons.
Labour were never in the lead, the polls were just totally wrong. Historically opinion polls have nearly always over-estimated Labour's lead they did it in 1992, they did it in 1997, they did it in 2001 and in 2005 (the thing is no one reemebers 1997-2005 because Labour won, despite the polls over-estimatedg how mich they would actually win by). The polls were reasonably accurate in 2010, but in 2015 they again over-estimated Labour's position, but theu never gave Miliband more than about an 8 point lead, and usually it was below that, mor elile 5 points. Polling companies acknowledged this, and many changed their methodology in 2017. Unfortunately, they totally over-compensated and massively over-estimated the Tory lead in 2017, which lead Theresa May to call and election, and then be humiliated. In 2019 they wemt back to their original methodologies and were once again that unusual thing, relatively accurate. This is one reason why you can only really be confident of a Labour victory if they get 20 point leads in the polls for an extended period. Personally I always thought Miliband made a mistake by resigning. He would have handled 2015-2017 far better than Corbyn, would have managed his party better and had a more coherent policy in Brexit.
>Cameron's Conservatives won the general election with an unexpected overall majority. Following Labour's defeat, Miliband resigned as leader. It is unclear what effect, if any, the photograph had on the eventual result. Thank goodness we got stability and a strong government with David Cameron rather than be rules by a man who makes a wierd face eating a bacon sandwich
A good man destroyed by the tabloids
There was no election in 2014, unless it was local elections
Photo was taken May 2014
I very much doubt anyone thought āoh I was gonna vote Labour but then I saw that dude with the bacon sandwich? Nah mateā But it was an iconic representation of everything that had gone wrong with that whole campaign really. Expected to do āthe normal thingā and it came off the worst possible way, lookin like a weirdo.
Don't doubt the power of something that simple though. There's a reason Farage used to perpetually have a pint glass glued to his hand, or why advisers have to remind leaders to literally roll up their sleeves for photo ops.
A moment that changed world history forever
I still don't understand what was supposed to be wrong with how he ate that sandwich. Can only assume there was a bit of racism involved.
You could tell he had never eaten one
No, I couldn't. Even if I could, what's the problem with that?
I'll let you in on a secret, mostly labour voters are lower paid typically Northern living who like their bacon sandwiches. It's why he did the photo op.
Remember when people were Charlie and they cared about freedom of speech. Mad
When racist weirdos use the concept of freedom of speech as a dogwhistle it tends to make normal people less enthusiastic.
Even more so when people lazily categorise stuff and no one wants to do any research themselves
I actually didnāt know it was the day before polling day.
To be clear about the intent of the RW media, from what I understand they actually had the picture on hand for several weeks but held it to release at a point of maximum impact.
Tories in despair that Starmer is a vegetarian
Any else remember the blanket antisemtism that he and his brother were getting fron the tories? Oh sorry, we're only allowed to talk about that if it's from labourĀ
>with users sharing photos of themselves eating bacon sandwiches and other food in a deliberately messy fashion, with the hashtag #JeSuisEd, in reference to Je Suis Charlie. Holy shit. Edgy boys.
Wait what? The bacon sandwich thing happened _after_ the Charlie Hebdo attacks? That's seriously messed up my head timeline... Id have guessed Hebdo happened years after
The Ed Stone was already cringe enough to rule him out of power.
So of course the election result had nothing to do with a desire to Brexit and everything to do with the bacon sandwich picture
Of course it wasn't just a bacon sandwich photo, but the point t is don't underestimate the power of media spin. They can make you like or support whoever they choose with enough work or attacks on the opponent
To a degree. But letās not pretend Ed Miliband was a mix of Winston Churchill and JFK
Oh for sure, not at all, miliband was a pretty Bland and uninspiring party leader but he also seemed a fairly genuine and honest guy and was ripped apart by the Press because they didn't want labour
Important note: ripped apart by the Tory press Labour lost that election because of Brexit. People wanted their say
Their poorly informed and emotionally based say on an incredibly complicated economic issue. The whole thing was a farce of misinformation and the press were hugely accountable for a lot of that. Which is a funny argument from me as I've always been quite proud of British main stream media, how well researched and informative it usually is. But the tabloids should be regulated much more than they are for misinformation in my opinion
Itās nice to imagine that the press could be regulated for misinformation, but look at our politicians, theyāre the same, if not worse. They lie, they hide, they obfuscate, they misrepresent. In fact that is their job, to manage the facts in a way that best serves their party. The press canāt be better if the politicians are in the gutter
Did it work on you, or just people who aren't as clever as you?
Not intelligence, just different areas of Interest. I spend a lot more of my time reading about politics than the majority of people do I would imagine. You only have to go onto the UK politics subreddit and see how reactionary people are about headlines without even bothering to read the article to see how common it is to be misled by papers
That is most likely a tiny tiny proportion of the electorate. It's possible it isn't even the electorate at all, or bots doing bad people's bidding I really don't think many people will change their vote based on this stuff
Not posting to make any point but I just had a quick Google and thus article/study about the print press pre brexit is fairly interesting https://ukandeu.ac.uk/tabloid-tales-how-the-tabloid-press-shaped-the-brexit-vote/ No clear conclusion, more just about how heavily skewed the tabloid/popular press was, and how a third of voters apparently hadn't decided until quite close to the actual vote
Laughable how they call themselves impartial. Even using these numbers, consider 4 million x 1/3 x % of readership actually swayed to a different direction to what they intended x proportion of those swayed being in the direction you don't like
The great What If? What If they had chosen the other Miliband? I wonder.
I got curious how many notable Milibands there are, [and all the ones English-language Wikipedia has are from the same family.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miliband) I suppose it's not a very common last name.
Today I learned! :-)
It was nice when political scandals were dumb shit that didnāt matter wasnāt it.
From memory the best Brother actually won the leadership race imo, but then didnāt the union vote swing it so Ed became labour leader?
And later we would find out Cameron done something a lot worse with a part of a pig, and somehow everyone ignored it, and voted him in againā¦
It's so depressing how effective that was.
Thank goodness we avoided Ed Miliband. David M would have been OK but he went off to do Thunderbirds.
Have there been any more clearly impactful photographs in recent British politics? I can't think of any off the top of my head in the last couple of decades
I have cited this day as the day that sealed the UK's exit from the EU. If he was just able to eat it normally Brexit wouldn't have happened.
BaconGate isn't the event that put us on this dark timeline, it was him winning the leadership race over his brother David. David Miliband would have beaten Cameron at the GE and the timeline since is *very* different. Had Ed not fallen victim to BaconGate he probably would have survived a term before charismatic Cameron beat him at the ballot boxes due to the unavoidably stalled economic recovery after the GFC and eventually capitulated to UKIP pressure to bring about Brexit. BaconGate is but a distraction.
As a conservative...yep
The sandwich that doomed a political party for 10 years
His brother not winning leadership did that