Jerry Hayes

Ed Miliband isn’t sad, he’s tragic

ED: The Milibands and the Making of a Labour Leader by Mehdi Hasan and James Macintyre is a much better book than it has been given credit for.

The making of a really good biography requires research, insight and some good gossip. The trouble is that Ed Miliband has not done anything particularly interesting except to be Gordon Brown’s bitch and trample all over his older brother to become leader of the Labour Party.

That is why I would recommend the reader skim through the first few chapters, which basically come to the conclusion that his friends thought he was dull and geeky. The splendid Vincent Graff used to co-present an LBC show when they were sprogs and came to the conclusion that Ed was, ‘very nasal, very serious, very focused and quite dull…there was never any laughter in the Green room, it was almost like he was doing a job’.

And this is the trouble with Ed.

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