Meet Gareth, the member of the silent majority picked out by Ed Miliband
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Version 0 of 1. He was the unseen star of the Labour party conference, an individual voter singled out and namechecked twice as Gareth in leader Ed Miliband’s speech, after an apparently random encounter at a picnic on Hampstead Heath. With his name trending on Twitter, the 36-year-old, picked out by Miliband as a barometer of popular opinion, suddenly found himself at the centre of media attention, including an appearance on Newsnight. Reflecting on the unexpected turn of events, he says the experience was “fun for the most part”, as well as being a “little bit terrifying”. “I am someone who has a very low kind of social media presence and yet within about half an hour the Daily Mail had a photo of me at a bar 10 years ago with a large cocktail – you do wonder how anyone can avoid the odd embarrassing photo coming up from the past,” said the Cambridge graduate, Gareth Edwards. Miliband, who was lambasted for forgetting parts of his address, which he gave without notes, referred in his speech to a “silent majority who want Britain to endure, but are also telling us it must change”. While he instanced the experiences of Xiomara, a young woman who lived in a pub near where he lives, and Josephine, a cleaner whom he met during the Scottish referendum campaign, the attention of social media and others was somehow piqued by Miliband’s double reference to Gareth – “pretty high up at a software company, but still can’t afford to buy a home for his family”. Despite Miliband’s eagerness to portray Labour as a party with the answers, Edwards says he has not decided who he will vote for in the general election. “The only certainty is that I won’t vote Tory.” One of the spin-offs from Edwards’s exposure was that a university contemporary, the Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert, recently got in touch to rekindle their friendship over a drink and a visit to the Commons. Could the Lib Dems be seeking to put one over on Labour by tempting Edwards, a former Lib Dem voter, back? “No, I don’t think so – if their strategy is buying individual voters drinks then …” he replies, laughing before finishing the sentence. “It was just a chance to catch up. We were at university about 10 or 15 years ago. It was nice to catch up with an old friend. We studied together.” “I will reflect on it nearer the time probably and see how I feel about it. I was a bit disillusioned with the Liberal Democrats, but when you chat to your friend as an MP you get a more personal view, although that’s obviously not an opportunity that most people get.” As for Miliband, Edwards says he has been following the trials and tribulations of the Labour leader more closely than he might otherwise have. “You feel like you have a little bond with someone when you are in the news together,” he says. “Whenever I see Ed Miliband’s name in the papers or TV I peer over and see what’s going on.” He adds: “To be honest it has been kind of sad for me to watch it. There are aspects of politics that I find a bit depressing, but watching the way the media has treated Ed over the last few months – every photo is him in a slightly awkward situation and so on – it feels like there has been a lot of media position of him and his image which I can’t believe is entirely fair.” Miliband has not mentioned him since, nor have there been any attempts by the Labour leader to reach out. Overall though, Edwards’s experience of briefly being in the political crosshairs was largely a positive one. “It was quite fun. I enjoyed going on Newsnight. I thought I would hate it but actually it was quite fun, so a little part of me kind of regrets that it’s all in the past.” It appears meanwhile that Gareth’s connection to the would-be Labour prime minister has ended. “I have not heard anything. I know someone else from my company. One of our admin team people had a chat with someone from Ed Miliband’s office and had a nice message from them,” he added. |