Sometimes, pundits become so bound up in their obsessions
that they are the last to realise that they are playing the same tune, stuck in
the same rut, trapped in their own ever decreasing circle. And this applies
rather more readily than he will admit to the miserable blues artist of Telegraph Blogs, “whingeing” Dan Hodges, whose hatred of Mil The Younger is beginning
to eat away at his very soul.
Dan Hodges, not supporting Labour. Again
Hodges was unable to accept that Miliband had won the Labour
leadership almost four years ago. He has remained unable to accept that fact
ever since. But, despite his incessant carping, Miliband remains party leader
and Labour remains ahead in the polls. Hodges left the party in an almighty
mardy strop: hardly anyone noticed. So this too was Miliband’s fault, and the
whining got louder.
After someone got hold of what looked for all the world like
a Russian surface to air missile and shot down a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777,
Hodges used
the aftermath to carp: “MH17: Ed
Miliband is more interested in taking a selfie with Obama than speaking for the
dead”. That’s so crass that it doesn’t merit attention. It’s using the
shooting down as a stick to beat Miliband. Cheap
and nasty.
The next day, readers
were fed the suggestion that Miliband doesn’t really know why he’s doing
the job. “Why does Ed Miliband want to be
Prime Minister?” Very good Dan, why did Young Dave want the job? More
vacuous sniping. And he still
won’t win next year: “Now that Ed
Miliband has accepted reality, Labour might be ready for the 2020 election”
was last Friday’s first effort.
Then later the same day, Hodges
doubled down: “Ed Miliband's attack
on political cynicism is the most cynical thing I've seen in years”. He
whined again about the visit to Washington DC. He whined about Miliband’s wife.
He whined about David Axelrod. He whined about the visit to Washington DC once
more. It clearly wasn’t fair. Why wouldn’t the ground open up and swallow
Miliband for him?
But come yesterday, Miliband was still there, so
back into carp mode went Dan. The idea of a “Peoples’ PMQs” was “of
course, a glaring example of
precisely the sort of superficial gesture politics he supposedly decries”.
Yeah, it was rubbish, like everything else he did! Can the leader of Her
Majesty’s opposition do anything right in the view of whingeing Dan Hodges? Can he heck.
I am reminded of the conclusion reached by Lyndon Johnson towards
the end of his Presidency: “If one
morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline
that afternoon would read ‘President Can't Swim’”. That is where Dan Hodges
is now in his view of Miliband. The only difference is that LBJ threw in the
towel rather than face the electorate – but Miliband will not.
Meanwhile, Hodges will carry on whingeing. But he will embarrass only himself.
5 comments:
There's no getting away from it, he is a peculiar bloke. The Cameroon Tories & few bitter Blairites adore him because he tells them what they want to hear. Simple as that.
Just like the chief air warden in Dad's Army who had a fixation with Capt. Mainwaring and his merry band and usually came off the worse.
Now what was his name...........?
If David Milliband were Labour leader, would there be all this press chatter about how weird he looks?
Guano
Either Hodges is as bitter as he sounds about his favoured Miliband not getting the job - which must make life very miserable for him - or he's cynically writing this drivel to order, which can't make for a very happy existence either.
Maybe he's hoping to get a better job on the back of his contribution to journalism - which is largely the "Dan Hodges explains what X means for Ed Miliband" meme that goes round Twitter every tome he publishes another Ed Miliband article.
What a sad waste of his abilities as a writer.
@Guano - actually yes, if David M was labour leader, you'd still get the "weird" commentary, and I rather imagine it would be worse.
Partly because the RW media are hellbent on portraying any labour leader as awful and geeky, and unfortunately for the poor lads, the Miliband genes tend towards tall, dark, incredibly strong-featured men(which is v easily caricatured) and partly because believe it or not there's more photos of David Miliband being caught in awkward poses than there are his brother. That infamous confetti picture, for one.
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