Alex Massie Alex Massie

Biography of A Nobody

Hats-off to Simon Heffer for his review of a new biography of Ed Miliband:

A biography of Ed Miliband has to try hard not to be the sort of thing one buys as a present for someone one avidly dislikes. This effort, the first in what its authors seem (perhaps optimistically) to imagine may be a long series of accounts of their subject’s life, does not try hard enough. It has detail — Messrs Hasan and Macintyre boast of a million words of interview transcripts — but in the end it is, plainly and simply, stultifyingly boring. I am not sure this is entirely the writers’ faults. Before reading their book, I thought Mr Miliband was simply oversold, a man born to disappoint. Now I realise that he, and therefore an account of his life, is boring too.

Lucky Dave. First Gordon, now Ed Miliband. Has any Tory leader – even the Lady – ever been so fortunate in his opponents? Even if the electorate were minded to agree with Mr Miliband I cannot conceive circumstances in which they’d be happy to hand him the keys to Downing Street.

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