Politics

Ed Miliband's Speech: Five Gareth-style "real voices" in political speeches

The Labour leader is far from the first politician to bungle a reference to a real person

September 24, 2014
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That's Gareth, back left RT @pimterry: Ed Miliband happened to stop by the annual @SoftwireUK picnic. As you do. pic.twitter.com/YAN81vjzLU

— Softwire Technology (@SoftwireUK) September 23, 2014


Yesterday, Labour leader Ed Miliband was mocked for including in his speech various “real voices:” the two young women who saw him in a park and wished he was Benedict Cumberbatch, Josephine the hard-up cleaner and good-old Gareth, now enjoying national TV stardom.

But the Labour leader is far from the first politician to clumsily conjure up an anecdote from a real or imagined chance encounter with the voters. Here are five of the most memorable, in reverse chronological order:

“Hackney Heroine” Pauline Pearce

After the London riots of 2011, Britain's politicians needed a hero(ine) to balance out the demonising rhetoric they had launched against the rioters themselves. Step up Pauline Pearce, aka “Lady P,” aka the “Hackney Heroine.” Pearce, a black former jazz singer, was taken up as a tabloid cause célèbre after she launched a tirade against black rioters for attacking their white neighbours. Nick Clegg laid claim to Pearce at an appearance in 2012, where he made sure to be photographed with her before she stood for his party at a council by-election in Hackney Central. Unfortunately for Clegg, Pearce published a video critique of the Lib Dems this August, saying she had felt “patronised” by other party members during her campaign to become party President, which she pulled out of as a result.

Neal Forde, the “40-year-old black man”

During the 2010 general election TV debates, then-leader of the opposition David Cameron referred to a “40-year-old black man” he had met in Plymouth, who told him that despite being an immigrant himself, he felt immigration had got out of control under Labour. It was a perfect Cameroon, soft-Tory moment, but unfortunately 51-year-old Neal Forde, the man to whom Cameron was referring, stepped forward to set a few points straight. He told reporters he didn't believe Cameron had the right solution to Britain's immigration situation, and that he had been teased because of mistakes in Cameron's reference to him. Notably Cameron said he had served for 30 years in the Navy when he only served for six. “But,” quipped Neal, “at least he took 11 years off my age.”

Joe the plumber

Joe Wurzelbacher was an Ohio small businessman whose cause was taken up by the 2008 Palin-McCain campaign for the US Presidency after he challenged then-Democrat hopeful Barack Obama at a rally. After Wurzelbacher suggested that Obama's small business tax policies might be at odds with “the American Dream” during a neighbourhood visit by the future President, McCain repeatedly brought up “Joe the Plumber” at the next Presidential TV debate that October, and went on to invite Wurzelbacher along to campaign events. Unfortunately for McCain, this backfired when he thought Joe was in the crowd at a rally in Defiance, Ohio, where the loudmouthed pipe-fixer was actually absent. After calling repeatedly for Joe to stand up, McCain was forced to cover his error with the rather lame line: “you're all Joe the Plumber.”

Jennifer (and her ear)

During his 1992 election campaign, then-Labour leader Neil Kinnock sought to highlight what he saw as Tory failings on the NHS with a broadcast about a five year old girl who had to wait a year before she received treatment for an ear condition. This was contrasted with another girl who went private and was treated swiftly. It was a great idea, bringing a large-scale issue down to an emotive, human level. Unfortunately, the Conservative party put the Daily Express in touch with the girl's surgeon and questioned the authenticity of Labour's account. In the ensuing furore, referred to as “the war of Jennifer's ear,” The Sun ran a story headlined "If Kinnock will tell lies about a sick little girl, will he ever tell the truth about anything?"

The mystery of Enoch Powell's Wolverhampton Widow

When Conservative politician Enoch Powell made his infamous 1968 “rivers of blood” speech, he told the story of a widow in his constituency who he said had been victimised by immigrants. Powell read out a letter by the women which claimed she was afraid to go out, and had had “excreta” pushed through her letterbox. At the time, nobody could find evidence that the widow even existed, despite a search by the local press, and the ensuing controversy was part of what got Powell sacked from Edward Heath's shadow cabinet. But in 2007, the Daily Mail reported comments by a friend of Powell's, who named the woman as a Druscilla Cotterill and said that the incidents Powell reported were true: he'd just kept her identity secret to protect her.