Miliband Takes His British Election Pitch to Russell Brand’s Audience
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Version 0 of 1. LONDON — In one of the more bizarre moments of a tight British election campaign, the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, went in the dead of night Monday to the apartment of Russell Brand, a bawdy comedian, to give him an interview, which was posted Wednesday on YouTube. Mr. Brand, who is also known for his expletive-filled rants against politics and politicians, has publicly urged Britons not to vote at all. But he is popular with young people, and Mr. Miliband in a tight race needs every vote he can get to become prime minister after the May 7 election. So he made his pilgrimage to Mr. Brand’s house in gentrifying Shoreditch, in east London, where Mr. Brand, wearing a sweatshirt and beads, interrogated the business-suited Mr. Miliband in an elegantly appointed kitchen. The Conservative media mocked Mr. Miliband and the more slangy accent he adopted in the interview, but Mr. Miliband defended his effort to reach out to disaffected Britons through Mr. Brand, who has almost 9.6 million followers on Twitter and recently wrote a rambling, anticapitalist political tract called “Revolution.” A trailer for the interview was seen by more than 200,000 people in less than 24 hours, and the full interview, lasting about 16 minutes, was posted on Mr. Brand’s YouTube channel, “The Trews,” which has more than one million subscribers. It was called “Milibrand: The Interview.” The two men discussed issues ranging from the power of bankers and Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, to London’s housing crisis and inequality. Mr. Miliband argued that politicians matter and citizens should vote, rejecting Mr. Brand’s view that bankers are more powerful than politicians and that voting is an exercise in futility. “We all got excited by Tony Blair, we all got excited by Barack Obama and what happened?” Mr. Brand asked. “The reason I have never voted in my life is because I think it doesn’t matter.” Mr. Miliband, not surprisingly, argued that it does. “Progress comes from people demanding change, politics responding, not all the way, and people pushing for that change to carry on,” Mr. Miliband said. “But without politics, without government, the change doesn’t happen.” In a typical exchange, Mr. Brand said, “We don’t want some sort of giddy ‘Yes we can’ euphoria, we want a bloke who is going to say, ‘I’m in this for the right reasons.’ ” Mr. Miliband, using more vernacular than usual, said: “We don’t want politicians saying, ‘Vote for me and on Day 1 the world is transformed.’ It ain’t gonna be like that. Right? It ain’t gonna be like that. Change is hard, right? Change takes time.” The right-wing Sun, still Britain’s most popular newspaper, said in an editorial that “if there are possible votes in it, Miliband’s there — spouting off in a comical Mockney accent,” a fake Cockney accent, “about sticking it to the tax-dodging corporations.” Prime Minister David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, said earlier: “Russell Brand is a joke. Ed Miliband, to hang out with Russell Brand, he’s a joke.” But Mr. Miliband was unbowed. He told reporters, “I will do anything and engage with anyone to try and persuade people to vote.” And his supporters, including the Guardian commentator Owen Jones, praised his effort to reach those Britons who feel alienated by politicians and the system in general. In a coda to the interview, Mr. Brand praised Mr. Miliband for being “prepared to come round here and talk to us.” The interview drowned out Mr. Cameron’s vow on Wednesday to introduce a law guaranteeing no rise in income tax rates, value-added tax or national insurance before 2020 if his party wins the election. The Labour Party dismissed Mr. Cameron’s pledge as a “last-minute gimmick,” and said that the Conservatives had a “secret plan” to cut tax credits for families and raise the value-added tax. Labour even put together a website, torysecretplan.com, which features a fake email to Mr. Cameron from George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, laying out cuts not to be announced until after the election. Opinion polls suggest a hung Parliament, with no party winning an absolute majority, and the two main parties, the Conservatives and Labour, splitting about two-thirds of the vote. |