Yesterday, BuzzFeed broke possibly the strangest story of the election campaign. It turns out that Ed Miliband has a smallish but committed following of teenage girls, who call themselves the #Milifandom. Here are some of the things they say about him:
Ed Milifandom. I have found a sense of purpose now. pic.twitter.com/rbZa1OHj72
— liz (@elizstaples) April 16, 2015
I told my mum about the Ed Milifandom and she laughed! THIS IS NOT A JOKE MUM THIS IS A LIFESTYLE — izzy // 186 (@hauntingphan) April 20, 2015
We're trapped in school during a tornado warning and I can't even watch Ed on tv but I bet he's slaying #milifandom — gabi (@johnlocktrash) April 20, 2015
(A "fandom," by the way, is a group of committed online followers which surrounds a TV show, pop star or, in this case, a goggle-eyed leading light of democratic socialism.)
When mainstream Twitter caught up with the phenomenon, there were inevitably a lot of good photoshops knocking about:
It's just possible that #milifandom has gone too far (h/t @frittaker) pic.twitter.com/gwMX5p9aDr — Robert Colvile (@rcolvile) April 22, 2015
One more for the #milifandom#milibae#milibandwagonpic.twitter.com/JEoIwAfUo1 — General Boles (@GeneralBoles) April 21, 2015
But the story is just one chapter in a developing narrative. Ed Miliband, for much of this parliament a supposed embarrassment to the Labour rank and file whose name wasn't mentioned on the doorstep, is becoming sort of cool. Here are his personal ratings compared to David Cameron's according to the pollster YouGov:
Not stellar, but there's been a significant climb. David Cameron has for the past year and a half generally comfortably beaten Miliband on this measure, and any narrowing of the gap creates problems for the Tories, who have rested a lot of their election strategy on doing Miliband down, hoping the public won't want to trust him on May 7th.
And who can forget Miliband being mobbed by screaming hen night goers on the Labour campaign bus? The bride-to-be herself even publicly said she was going to vote Labour...
Or the undeniable cuteness of his reaction to hearing the acronym "YOLO" for the first time:
Ed Miliband has the most heartwarmingly clueless reaction to finding out what yolo means (ht @TimeOutLondon) #GE2015pic.twitter.com/RRObEHWgVJSo what's his secret?
— Zing Tsjeng (@misszing) April 20, 2015
As any woman's mag or dating site survey can tell you, self confidence is sexy, and Tim Bale, Chair of Politics at Queen Mary University and author of a new book on Miliband's leadership, thinks he's got plenty of it. Bale says that, while Miliband has been helped by his appearances in forums like the TV debates, unmediated as they were by Ed's enemies in the printed press, the Labour leader may have felt vindicated by his early successes in the campaign, allowing his confidence in his own abilities to shine through and propel him further. "I'm not saying he's superhuman," says Bale, but Miliband has "an underlying self belief which has seen him through the last five years."
Not superhuman, eh? Perhaps, but the way things are going, who knows what we'll think in a few months...
what ever gets young people voting I guess.... http://t.co/AMuL2D7o4Q#milifandom#AfterAllThis#Ge2015#vote — Matt May (@theemattmay) April 22, 2015
