When Ed Miliband quit as leader of the Labour Party, I don’t think we truly appreciated quite what we were losing. Not politically, obviously, but rather in terms of his contribution to the gaiety of the nation. We don't have Miliband to kick around anymore, and I for one feel that politics is so much the poorer for it.
From a satirical point of view, Ed was gold dust. Ed was box office. Ed was to political comedy what Muhammad Ali was to boxing, and it saddens me that the quartet of Labour MPs running to succeed him seem insufferably lightweight by comparison.
Where are the laughs going to come from if Andy Burnham is elected to lead the Labour Party? Miliband had a brilliantly quirky and expressive air about him even before he opened his mouth, but Burnham just sports a perpetually miserable look of world-weary pain on his face. Whether this comes from despairing about the perceived lack of social justice in the UK or from gallstones, it’s impossible to tell, but one thing’s for sure - it’s not in the least bit funny.
To be fair to Andy, he’s trying his best to make us laugh, what with his impassioned railing against the "Westminster bubble" of which he’s been a part of for over two decades. Burnham’s career has encompassed researcher, special adviser, MP, minister, and secretary of state, but to hear him speak you’d be forgiven for thinking that he was actually a salt-of-the-earth miner who took a day trip to "that London" and accidentally ended up in the House of Commons.
If Andy Burnham is doing his level best to paint a less than honest portrait of himself, then his leadership rival Liz Kendall is suffering from certain Labourites colouring her a deep shade of Tory blue. Kendall may or may not have comic potential, but as things stand, her common sense fiscal views have resulted in her being branded as the second coming of Margaret Thatcher. As such, she is unlikely to be facing Cameron across the despatch box come September.
As for Yvette Cooper, I really begin to despair. I’m sure she’s a lovely woman, a great MP, an effective minister, a loving wife and mother. But apart from her "ice-pixie" nickname there is literally nothing to work with in the comedy department. Satirists will be heading down to Job Centre Plus en masse if she sneaks through on second preferences.
That leaves us with just one remaining hope. A very faint, bearded, short-tempered hope, but a hope nonetheless. If certain polls are to be believed (and why wouldn’t they be?), the socialist throwback and "friend" of Hamas that is Jeremy Corbyn could possibly be the next leader of the Labour Party. And as George Galloway has proved, there’s always comedy value in crazy left-wing policies combined with beards and hats.
If Labour go for Comrade Corbyn in September, it will go some way to filling the Miliband-shaped hole in all our lives.
General Boles is not the Conservative MP for Grantham and Stamford; nor is he a minister within the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Follow him on Twitter @GeneralBoles
