You won't like him when he's angry

Well, it’s been a torrid time for Ed Miliband of late. A mini rebellion in his own ranks, Bacon-sandwich Gate, being twatted every week at PMQs, his every policy ridiculed, his every appearance hooted at and a minor celebrity picking apart his tax stance in one embarrassing exchange. It must be time for yet another relaunch and yet another round of get-tough sound bites for the popular media. But a mild-mannered man can only take so much, so, on hearing of the collapse of the Labour vote in the by-election and with Emily-racist-Thornberry's resignation, today was the last straw.

He stormed home to Primrose Hill and in a manner approved by pickup artist Julien Blanc gripped Justine by the throat and demanded “Why? Why me? Who is responsible for my party being decimated, demoralised and ground into dust?” Justine, choking, gasped, “It’s Ed Balls. He’s been briefing against you!” Ed stormed out of the house and demanded his chauffeur take him to the Balls household. Throwing open the door, Ed walked straight past a distraught Yvette Cooper and over to the piano where he placed Ed Balls in a stranglehold and demanded, “Was it you?” Arms flailing, Ed struggled free and pleaded, “No, no, it wasn’t me… it might have been Harriet.”

Before Mr & Mrs Cooper could say another word, Ed turned on his heel, his anger burning bright in his red cheeks and he stormed off to scour the children’s playgrounds, paediatric wings and orphan’s homes for the errant Deputy Leader. Eventually, still furious, he found her contemplating a PIE and immediately launched into a tirade of abuse as she backed away into the corner. “How fucking dare you, you bitch!” he screamed at her, his normal reserve buried deep beneath wave after wave of volcanic fury. As he reached for her throat Harriet managed to shriek, “It wasn’t me! It wasn’t any of us! We even had a hashtag, #WeBackEd

“Who then?” demanded Ed “Who is behind all this?” The variously battered and bruised shadow cabinet slowly came together and after a few minutes decided at whose door to lay the blame for all the Labour Party’s recent troubles. “We believe,” ventured Oily Umunna, “we believe the root of all this evil is…” He paused. “Well, come on,” said Ed, “spit it out, man!” Chuka looked at his feet as he mumbled, “Nigel Farage.” The room fell silent.

“Right,” said Ed, “I’ll have the fucker. I’ll rip off his head and shit down his neck. I’ll use his knackers for door knockers. I’ll tear him a new arse, rip his guts apart and stamp on his still-beating heart while eating his kidneys. That nasty racist nut job won’t know what’s hit him!” And with that he strode out, jumped into his car and commanded the driver to head for Rochester. Arriving in town it was the work of a few minutes to track the source of revelry down to the pub nearest the campaign headquarters.

Ed marched up to the doors, threw them open wide and stepped into the party. Boozy, red-faced ‘Kippers suddenly stopped as they felt the cool breeze and stared into the stormy face of the Labour Party leader. Silence, into which Ed boomed, “Bring me Farage!” A whisper went round and quickly fell silent again as a tweed-jacketed figure in mustard corduroys turned around from the bar. “Wotcha!” he said and raised his glass.

“Are you Farage?” asked Ed, “Are you the man who has demoralised my party and laid waste my vote? Are you the man responsible for the total collapse of morale in Labour and the near demise of this once great movement as a political force? Are you the man who has ridiculed me and made a mockery of the Miliband name?” he demanded. Nigel took a drag of his cigarette, flicked the butt to the ground and casually trod on it. “Yes, old boy, I believe I may very well be. What can I do for you?” He held out a hand to shake.

Grrrrrrrrrrr!

Ed straightened up to his full height, carefully centred the knot on his tie, smoothed down the rumpled front of his shirt and strode purposefully forward until he stood a mere foot away from Farage. Ignoring the proffered hand and taking a deep, calm, measured breath he looked straight into Nigel’s eyes and said, “Well, could you just stop it, please?”

Opposites Day

The job of Her Majesty’s official Opposition is to oppose the government of the day. Ordinarily the way to achieve this is to ridicule the policy and competence of the incumbents while presenting credible alternatives. A certain amount of hyperbole is to be expected but in resorting to the texts of Ancient Greece, Ed Milband’s New-but, Old-but Labour is stretching to breaking point the aphorisms about learning from history. Transcripts have come to light of Shadow Cabinet strategy meetings…

Ed: Our job is to oppose, so that’s what we’ll do. Whatever they say, we’ll say the opposite. On Opposites Day black will be white, up will be down and left will become right.

Shadow Cabinet: Didn’t Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell already do that? And we all know how that ended.

Ed M: Okay, so forget the left-right thing. But we know David Cameron must have a chink in his armour, an Achilles heel. We just have to find that.

Ed Balls: How about the flatlining economy?

SC: To be fair, Ballsy, you can take naysaying too far sometimes. It IS a flat line… it’s just  an upwardly sloping one.

Ed M: How about we attack them on their employment record?

SC: Really, Ed? You really want to go there? Have you seen the figures?

Ed M: But the Prime Minister just doesn’t get it, does he? With this cost of living crisis eroding everybody’s lifestyle. We can keep stabbing away at him with that and eventually we’ll break him down.

*silence*

Ed M: What?

SC: Have you not seen the papers lately? More in work than ever before, cost of living the lowest it’s been for half a decade, housing market healthy and new-build starts higher than we ever managed… And that mild winter didn’t help one bit. Nobody ran out of heat, nobody starved, too few old people died. We’re telling you Ed, this situation is desperate.

Ed M: They have utterly failed to get a grip on immigration. 200,000 a year are coming here, taking our jobs, claiming our benefits…

SC: We let in over 3 million…

Ed B: ...that we know about.

Ed M: I know, let’s try and say he brought a criminal into Downing Street. He’ll go down in history as the first politician ever to employ a criminal! And trying to get into bed with Murdoch - can you imagine how the public will react to that?

Harman: Have you really forgotten everything about the Blair years? And did you ever hear of Robert Maxwell? You can attack Cameron's character Ed, but at least he has one to attack. Sometimes I think he looks quite the statesman while you're banging on with your puny sound bites. We're fed up of having to come to your defence all the time.

[Ed Miliband’s lower lip begins to tremble and he looks - as he so often does – as if he is about to cry. He stamps his foot and raises his voice a notch in both volume and pitch.]

Ed M: But I am the leader! And I have done my homework. He hasn’t done the right thing! He has brought disgrace on his office! He hasn’t learned the lessons of history! He HAS got a weak heel and I will keep on stabbing at it until he is on his upper class, blue-bloody knees.

Harman: But Ed, if you had done your homework you would realise that a) The general public forgot all about Leveson a year ago, b) Your carping on about him being out of touch is exactly what everybody accuses you of being, c) Your constant ‘intellectual’ politicking has been called out for the bullshit it is, d) Achilles isn’t history, it’s a myth, and e) Compared to you he doesn’t look like Achilles so much as Hercules.

Wait! I've got an idea!

Ed M: So you're saying we should stop with the personal attacks, come up with some truly ground-breaking new policies, fight for a better Britain and present the voting public with a proper, viable alternative to government as normal? But we're the official opposition, right? So let's stick with our winning formula and just do exactly the opposite.