Edymandias (04/05/15)

Ed Miliband unveils Labour's pledges carved into a stone plinth in Hastings

Broadly speaking, the Guardian is a Labour supporting newspaper yet its regular sketch writer John Crace can find nothing positive to say about Ed Miliband's latest publicity stunt: a Moses-like stone tablet inscribed with six meaningless election pledges.

As John puts it, "Ed Miliband has just raised the stupidity bar still higher" and "makes Neil Kinnock's 1992 'We're all right' Sheffield rally moment look almost clever."     

Ouch, that has to hurt because it's the kind of blunt criticism which has the ring of truth. 

Ed Miliband's carved pledges could sink like a stone

By John Crace - The Guardian

Place a monument of promises in the Downing Street rose garden? Miliband would be better flogging it to the Lib Dems to be recycled as its party’s gravestone

Ed Miliband has commissioned a giant stone inscription bearing Labour’s six election pledges

In several thousand years’ time, an archaeologist will uncover a 2.6 metre piece of stone that had been lying buried for hundreds of years. Scholars will spend just as long thereafter trying to interpret its meaning. Was it the centre of a hitherto unknown civilisation based around the sun god Ed? Will future transport ministers pledge billions of pounds of public money to build an underpass to protect this national monument?

Of all the stunts, in all the towns … In one of the tightest elections in 50 years, which looks set to be won by the party leader the public mistrusts the least, Ed Miliband has just raised the stupidity bar still higher. It makes Neil Kinnock’s 1992 “We’re all right” Sheffield rally moment look almost clever.

What possessed Miliband to imagine that carving a series of election pledges into an enormous slab of limestone that would be placed in the Downing Street garden were he to become prime minister on 8 May was a good idea? There isn’t a single sentient being with connecting synapses anywhere in any planet in any universe who could think that was a good idea.

Even the title is a hostage to fortune. A Better Plan. A Better Future. This stone Ed, I’m sorry to say, is symbolic of a totally Crap Plan. Or worse, No Plan. Then there are the pledges. 1. A Strong Economic Foundation. When some future Arthur Evans finds this battered, broken foundation stone several hundred feet underground his first thought will be “My name is Edymandias, King of Kings / Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.” Shelley will last far longer than this. As for the rest … They read more like focus group findings than serious electoral promises. A country where the next generation does better than the last. Higher living standards for working families. Archaeologists will be snigger at those. How sweet! They all say that, don’t they? And now look at them …

There’s not a single part of this stone that doesn’t say brain-dead. If Moses had come down from Mount Sinai with a tablet of commandments as dopey as this, the whole history of religion would have had to be rewritten. The Israelites would just have said to themselves: “That Moses. He’s having a laugh.” Except Ed isn’t apparently. Unless he’s secretly filming a post-election episode of The Thick of It. The only thing that can be said for Ed’s tablet – apart from, start taking different ones – is that that there are only six commandments rather than the full 10. Some embarrassment saved.

If Miliband does become prime minister, then it will stand unseen by anyone in the rose garden until the next prime minister knocks it down. How many members of the public will get invited to a Downing Street garden party where they will be able to admire its majesty? Or is its sole purpose to remind Miliband of what he is supposed to be doing when he draws the bedroom curtains every morning? My guess is that there will be 65 million people reminding him on a weekly basis anyway.

And if he doesn’t make it to Downing Street, the stone is history by Friday morning. Or soon thereafter, depending on how long it takes to form a coalition. The best hope is that he might be able to flog it off cheap to the Lib Dems to be recycled as a memorial for their party. From Edstone to Headstone.

Now think of a stunt that might have had meaning. A stone with all the pledges that the Tories and the Lib Dems had made at the previous election in 2010. Then place it in a prominent, public place and commission a mason to chip away at all those that hadn’t been kept until the morning of 7 May. By which time there would be very little left.

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