In America, presidential candidates make films about serving in Vietnam. In Britain, Ed Miliband has made one about going to a comprehensive. If this really is the most exciting and appeal thing about him, then Labour is in some trouble. The intention of the video is clear enough: he wanted to say ‘I didn’t go to Eton’ over and over again. But do voters care? Only in Westminster is it exceptional to have gone to what Alastair Campbell called a ‘bog standard comprehensive’ and Ed Miliband would be ill-advised to claim that he won a Purple Heart of the Proletariat. He was born into Labour aristocracy, the son of a Marxist historian, he’s been having discussions about politics from pre-school age and has spent almost all of his working life in SW1 apart from a year in Harvard which he took as a sabbatical because Ed Balls was making his life hell at the Treasury.
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