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The Guardian is normally a very Labour friendly newspaper, but Christina Patterson doesn't hold back in her rather unfaltering portrait of the party leader, Ed Miliband.

Ed, says Christina, has a property portfolio worth around £4.5 million and a household income in the region of £340,000 a year - while holding himself out as a 'man of the people', of course. 

And if Ed has a mortgage (or more than one) his cost of living will have actually fallen over the past 6 years or so because of the low interest rates the UK has experienced since the great crash of 2008.

So whatever Ed Miliband is, he's certainly not Mr Average.

Barack Obama can't save Ed Miliband

The Labour party leader is desperate for a White House invite. But it won't convince us he is prime minister material


By Christina Patterson - The Guardian

'Nearly four years after he became leader of the Labour party, the main thing people know about Ed Miliband is still that he wrecked his brother’s dreams.' Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

They want him to meet Barack Obama. Ed Miliband's advisers are apparently desperate for the Labour leader to have an official meeting at the White House. They believe people will think he's more prime ministerial if they see photos of him with the most powerful man in the world.

Perhaps they've forgotten that Miliband's former boss didn't look all that like a prime minister at a UN summit in 2009. Gordon Brown was already in the job when his aides begged for a meeting with Obama and were, after five refusals, granted a "walk and talk" in a kitchen.

Miliband's aides must be hoping David Axelrod can help. Axelrod, who was taken on in April, helped get Obama to power and coined the slogan, "Yes, we can". It's a shame he didn't seem, from a tweet, to know how to spell Miliband's name, but that doesn't mean he can't get him a meeting. It also doesn't mean he can. Obama wasn't pleased when Miliband changed his mind over military action on Syria. This has apparently left "bruises" in the White House that might take a while to fade.

If Miliband's aides can't get him a meeting, they'll have to come up with something else. It isn't great that 60% of those questioned in a YouGov poll last month thought the Labour leader was "not up to the job" of prime minister. Or that 59% thought he was "weak" and 52% "out of touch" with their concerns. It's true Labour is still ahead in the polls, but in a YouGov survey on Friday its lead was cut to three points. Ten months before an election, this isn't great.

The answer, according to some of his aides, is to present Miliband as "Mr Normal". He "has to be authentic", a "senior Labour source" told a newspaper at the weekend. "There's no point trying to pretend he's something he's not. Ed is a family man who loves spending time at home with his wife and kids."

He's right that it's normal for people to like their children. It isn't quite so normal to have a property portfolio of £4.5m and a reported annual household income of about £340,000. It might be normal for the fortysomething former special advisers who now seem to run the country, but if you're going to slag off "millionaires in the cabinet" it's probably a good idea not to be one yourself. It certainly isn't normal to go on and on about a "cost of living crisis" and then not know the cost of your weekly shop.

And when Miliband tried to eat a bacon sandwich during the run-up to the European elections in May, it looked as though he'd been told this is what "normal" people do, but that he'd be much happier with a nice brioche.

It's lovely to be "authentic", of course, but exactly which Miliband is? Is it the one who "took on" Rupert Murdoch or the one who posed, at the start of the World Cup, with a front page of The Sun? That one looked as though he was in a hostage video made by Somali pirates and was trying to pretend his kidnappers were treating him well.

These things wouldn't matter so much if we knew what Miliband wanted to do. The trouble is, we don't. Is he for public sector pay rises or against them? Will he carry on funding free schools? If he doesn't like cuts, which ones would he scrap? If he hasn't ruled out a referendum on Europe, when might he rule one in? Sure, he took a bold stance on Syria, but what about the rest of his foreign policy? If you're going to meet world leaders, you surely ought to have made this a bit clearer in at least one speech?

It's all very well to stand up to the energy companies, but a promise of a price fix doesn't amount to a vision for change. Many of us think the government could be doing a damn sight better on education, youth employment and building industries for the future. But saying you'll have a "one nation" approach isn't the same as showing how you'll actually make that nation better.

Nearly four years after he became Labour leader, the main thing people know about Miliband is still that he wrecked his brother's dreams. If he hadn't, according to that June YouGov poll, the party would be in line for an easy win. But he did and it isn't. It certainly isn't the usual definition of a "family man". Perhaps if Obama does get to meet him, he might ask him why.

@queenchristina_

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