Is Ed Miliband too ugly to be prime minister? Or leader of the opposition? It’s a question that has been captivating entirely no-one since John Humphrys, clearly the world’s most handsome and desirable man, suggested the younger Miliband was as rough as a robber’s dog. And yet, it pops up again. The Sunday Times commissioned a poll to ask the Great British Public what they thought.
Astoundingly, the majority did not reply with “I don’t care either way – why are you asking me this? Is this really all you’ve got, at a time when our economies are circling the drain? Pointless tittle-tattle about the attractiveness or otherwise of leaders of the opposition? I remember when the Sunday Times stood for something, some stray fragment of journalistic integrity, a concept that long seems to have passed you by.” Or at least, if they did, their barbed retorts have not been recorded by the psephologists in great detail on this occasion.
Is this what it’s come to? Can we only judge our politicians based on whether they are as startlingly delicious as John Humphrys – unarguably the world’s most gorgeously enticing man – or fall short of his high standards? Well, apparently it has. Forget Ed Miliband’s policies; forget his presentation; forget anything he might say, or do. Is he pretty enough to be PM?
My reaction to this is the kind of thing that makes political correspondents, were they ever to chance upon this page while chortling away about a terrifically clever pun one of their sources told them over an enormous subsidised lunch, shake their heads. Oh but this is the cut and thrust, they would say, were they ever accidentally to happen upon these words. This is all part of the knockabout fun that is the world of politics.
I’m all for making fun of people, whether it’s deserved or not. Some of the world’s most brilliant and successful political leaders have been disgustingly, repulsively unattractive. You’d hardly want a kiss on the lips from FDR, or Churchill’s baby-like face looming over and gurning at you during a moment of passion. Must we want to have sex with people, or consider them attractive, in order to believe in what they say?
Of course, it could get even worse in the near future. Imagine what could happen if Labour’s Yvette Cooper, or any other bright and intelligent female politician, managed to become leader of their party. What then? It could all become a pungent mess of whether we could consider them as PILFs – politicians we’d like to fuck – rather than people with progressive policies.
In one sense, then, the shabby treatment of Ed Miliband over this pointless piffling issue opens up the door to more of this kind of unedifying garbage in the future. You can see with the fuss made over Louise Mensch’s looks that this kind of thing is just waiting to be unleashed – and it will probably be a lot worse for whichever unlucky female takes over at the top of a political party in the future than it is now for Ed.
Not that that’s any consolation. Deride Ed for anything you like – his use of the word ‘atmos’, for example, which made me cry blood into a bucket last week – but not for how pretty he is naturally. Despite all the attempts to make it so, this isn’t a bloody playground. Not yet. Even the stunningly beautiful John Humphrys cannot convince me of that.
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