Thinking Paper # 6: Why won’t Ed Miliband ever be Prime Minister?

Abstract

On the continued theme of faces, the IIPBA looks this week at Labour leader, Ed Miliband and assesses what it is exactly that is so unappealing about him. Is it because he looks like a Panda, sounds a little silly, has zero to traces of gravitas, and “human” qualities that leave most humans wondering, and I quote, “if he does human, what the fuck am I meant to be?”.

We consulted several studies on the issue and carried out our own market research. The conclusion is pretty strong: he’s got a silly face.

Cited studies

• A study by Tailor and Harpington 2010, found that 9 out of 10 sniffer dogs, when asked to identify a human, could not pick Miliband out of a line up which included three tins of soup, a 2008 Lake District calendar, a copy of Heat magazine and one of those balls that some people make using elastic bands.

• We asked 39,000 people about Miliband’s “human” qualities. Our favourite quote from the responses we received was from Gary Smythe who said “I hate Ed Miliband; I genuinely hate everything about his stupid face”.

• In a study by Young et al 2008, sociologists asked 150 two year olds to look at pictures of existing Cabinet members of the then Labour government. All but three of them began crying when they saw a picture depicting Ed Miliband smiling. One of the mothers of the children involved claimed that her child’s first word followed shortly after the experiment – although unsubstantiated, the child reportedly said the word “hate”. We would like to suggest to our readers that this is definitely true.

• During a brainstorming session we held with a troop of Bonobo monkeys, 98% of participants threw shit (their own and others) at a picture of Miliband on the wall. Despite the session being attended primarily by Bonobo’s, this is called “chimping”. Headline stat: 98% of all Bonobo’s choose to “chimp” Miliband's face.

Conclusion

Gary Smythe captured the predominant feeling we captured in our research and leads us to the very basic conclusion that he will never be Prime Minister because of his “stupid face”.

_{^Picture copyright ARCHIVED Department of Energy and Climate Change, used under Creative Commons license^}