The past few days have seen what’s likely to be the biggest moment of levity in the entire 2015 general election (and if you think this thing has been dragging on, spare a thought for me and my fellow Americans, eighty-one weeks from our next general election and currently wading through hundreds of thinkpieces about the existential significance of Hillary Clinton’s order at a Mexican fast-food chain). This was the week of the #milifandom: flower crowns and earnest bewilderment, the meme-creating internet colliding with weary political journalists, passionate young people who lack the right to vote finding a voice and a platform. It was the week when the perpetually-awkward Labour leader found himself at the centre of something literally no one anticipated: people on the internet liked him – a lot. Like, a lot.
The general public learned about Ed Miliband’s burgeoning fandom in a BuzzFeed post on Tuesday. The article shed light on a new and relatively surprising surge of collective public interest in Miliband, who in recent days has managed to attract an army of teenage fans. The Milifandom appears to be made up of mostly underage girls with other popular fannish affiliations – Tom Hiddleston, Sherlock, and One Direction, to name a few. (Note that these are not the only sorts of subjects that attract fandoms and fangirls, as I’ve seen widely reported in the media; for example, there are more than 18,000 fandoms on Archive of Our Own, a popular fan fiction-hosting site, and yes, “Political RPF – UK 20th-21st c.,” stories about current or recent British political figures romantically paired nearly every way you can imagine, is one of them.)
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