‘F@%£ off Ed, we’ll put balloons around it’
Happy 10th birthday to the EdStone
There will be lots of comment around today about this week’s elections – including on my 5 Live show from 2pm – but I wanted to go back to a big moment in politics which happened exactly 10 years ago today. Which makes me feel very old. Again. When I wrote about what happened in a car park in Hastings for my book, none of those closest to it would speak on the record. Even now. Let that be a lesson to everyone.
Car park, Hastings
Saturday, 2 May 2015
There is a scene at the beginning of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey where the monkeys (or at least actors dressed as monkeys) wake up and find something has landed in their patch of dusty rock, apparently from space.
They screech and leap around, against a soundtrack of eerie soprano warbling, nervously creeping closer to the huge black rectangular slab which is sticking out of the ground.
The sun rises over the top edge of the monolith, marking the dawn of mankind, as suddenly the apes acquire the intelligence to use rocks and bones as tools, initially to break things and then to club each other to death.
One suspects this was not what the Labour Party’s biggest brains had in mind when they decided to carve their 2015 election pledges onto a similar stone tablet. But when news of this idea spread among party staff a week before polling day, a mixture of disbelief, fear and dismay prompted several of them to share clips of the Kubrick movie.
In the end it was Labour officials themselves who set about trying to club each other to death over the stunt, the fallout of which a decade later remains so raw that, remarkably, none of those closest to it will speak on the record even now. ‘It’s still quite painful,’ one of those involved tells me. Another says: ‘It has genuinely been too difficult a subject for people to discuss even together in darkened rooms for years.’ A third key figure also demurred from an on the record conversation: ‘I haven’t got much interest in getting into it I’m afraid.’ A fourth said: ‘I can’t. I just can’t.’
In the final fortnight before the 2015 election, the polls suggested that the Conservatives and Labour were neck and neck. The big event in the campaign calendar had been Ed Miliband’s decision to do an interview with piratical poseur Russell Brand, who had previously told his fans not to bother voting at all. During their fifteen-minute YouTube exchange in Brand’s kitchen, the comedian-turned-conspiracy theorist complained about ‘unelected powerful elites’, and Miliband insisted ‘It’s not about being edgy.’ This meeting of minds is what Labour spinners had been worried would be the reason why the 2015 campaign would be remembered. They were wrong.
By this point Miliband was exhausted, drained by eighteen-hour days criss-crossing the country with his closest aides, including Bob Roberts, the director of communications, just doing as they were told by HQ. The campaign was being coordinated from a war room set up in a side room at 1 Brewer’s Green, Labour’s glass-and-steel three-storey headquarters. At the heart of this team were Spencer Livermore, the campaign director, Paddy Hennessy, the deputy director of communications, Lucy Powell, a Labour MP and vice-chair of the campaign, and Torsten Bell, the head of policy.
Together they closely guarded the famous ‘grid’, the hour-by-hour matrix of announcements, briefings, visits, media appearances and stunts which Miliband and his team would embark on in the final days of the campaign.
Paranoia in the war room was so widespread that the blinds on the windows had been closed to prevent the Tories from spying on them from neighbouring buildings. Had David Cameron got his binoculars out and managed to sneak a peek at the Labour grid he might have been baffled by one entry for Saturday, 2 May 2015, which said simply ‘Quarry Event’.
‘What the f*** is that?’
It was no less perplexing to some of the most senior figures in the Labour campaign. Having been otherwise engaged in the day-to-day of a campaign already into its fifth week, it was only on Thursday, 30 April that concerns started being raised about what exactly the ‘Quarry Event’ involved. ‘What the f*** is that?’ asked one official, who had belatedly clocked it on the grid.
It was, it transpired, the brainchild of Bell, the wonkish former Treasury adviser who helped write the party’s manifesto. [And now a treasury minister in the Starmer government.] Colleagues were told enigmatically that Bell, a keen rock climber, had ‘connections with someone in the quarrying business’.
The original idea was to have Labour’s key election pledges carved into a rock face. When that proved unfeasible, it had been decided that they would instead be etched onto a stone slab. ‘You are just taking the piss,’ said one official after being told belatedly of the plan. ‘Go away, I’ve got work to do, don’t do this to me. It’s not true.’ But it was. And it was too late to stop it.
On Sunday, 3 May The Observer carried a low-key 300-word story on the bottom-right-hand corner of page three. The article began:
‘Ed Miliband has commissioned a giant stone inscription bearing Labour’s six election pledges that is set to be installed in the Downing Street Rose Garden if he becomes prime minister. The 8ft 6in-high limestone structure is intended to underline his commitment to keep his promises by having them literally “carved in stone” and visible from the offices inside No 10.’
The decision to brief this stone-cold scoop to one friendly paper meant that already-sceptical rivals had even more reason not to take it entirely seriously. By this point, the ‘limestone structure’ – which would soon become known as the ‘EdStone’ – was already out there. It had been photographed, under embargo, for the benefit of waiting cameras the day before in an overcast car park by the sea.
‘Bob, Bob, doesn’t it look a bit like a gravestone?'
On the morning of Saturday, 2 May Miliband was in the car on the way to Hastings when photos were sent through of what he was going to be unveiling. Although he had been vaguely aware of a stone-based stunt on the grid, this was the first time he had actually seen it. ‘Bob, Bob, doesn’t it look a bit like a gravestone?,’ the Labour leader asked his top spin doctor. ‘F*** off Ed, we’ll put some balloons around it,’ Roberts replied.
The pair then discussed turning round and cancelling the photo op. But in previous days they had vetoed at least three other ‘gimmicky, silly’ ideas from campaign headquarters, and feared a revolt if they withdrew from this one at such a late stage.
With some trepidation, they pulled into the car park and clapped eyes on the thing for the first time. And Ed was right, it looked a lot like a gravestone.
‘I want the British people to remember these pledges, to remind us of these pledges, to insist on these pledges,’ Miliband told a crowd up to one deep places. They were not waving Bob’s promised balloons but small pink flags, huddled around blue scaffolding which was supporting the limestone lump. (An early plan to unveil it in a school had been dropped over concerns that the floor might collapse under the weight.)
To add to the comic scene, in the background could be seen a trailer bearing an election poster for the Green Party and, for some reason, a tethered horse. The carved pledges on the stone themselves lacked in excitement what they also lacked in specificity: ‘A strong economic foundation. Higher living standards for working families. An NHS with the time to care. Controls on immigration. A country where the next generation can do better than the last.’
Nobody can quite explain how or why it happened. Stewart Wood, then a Miliband adviser, once told me: ‘My involvement was standing at the side of it in Hastings watching it get unveiled, with the guy who sculpted it standing next to me saying, “Don’t you think it’s a good bit of work?” and me saying “It’s . . . you know . . . a great bit of sculpture.”’ It was the work of Basingstoke firm stoneCIRCLE. The firm’s boss, Jeff Vanhinsbergh, later helpfully admitted to being a Tory voter, joking: “It does seem that stone was the final nail in the coffin for Ed Miliband.”’
On Monday, 4 May the picture of the event appeared prominently on the front of The Guardian and Financial Times, with smaller inserts on page one of The Sun (‘Off his rock-er’) and The Daily Telegraph, but much of Fleet Street was more distracted by the recent birth of Princess Charlotte. On the inside pages it was perhaps one of the first examples of papers running ‘internet memes’ as political news, showcasing how Miliband had been mocked up variously as Moses, Mount Rushmore and Christ the Redeemer.
‘Ed Miliband builds a policy cenotaph. And you wonder why we stopped doing The Thick of It?’
The funereal undertones were hard to ignore, appearing to be a gravestone to a recently deceased political party. The Conservatives leapt on it too, David Cameron saying he had thought it was a joke and ‘had to check first it wasn’t April 1 because I just couldn’t believe this was a serious proposition’ and Boris Johnson called it ‘some weird commie slab’ and ‘the heaviest suicide note in history’. Simon Blackwell, the comedy writer, declared the whole thing beyond parody: ‘Ed Miliband builds a policy cenotaph. And you wonder why we stopped doing The Thick of It?’
More problematic was that the great slab cast a shadow over the detailed plans for Labour’s final days of campaigning, including carefully planted stories revealing a £2 billion deficit in the NHS and a leaked recording of John Major, the former Conservative prime minister, admitting to a ‘pretty substantial underclass’ in poor areas across the country despite five years of the Tories being in power. It fell to Lucy Powell, a regular media firefighter and now Commons Leader, to face more mockery of the masonry. She didn’t really help matters when she went on BBC Radio 5 Live and said: ‘I don’t think anyone’s suggesting the fact that he’s carved them into stone means that he is absolutely not going to break them or anything like that.’
By this point the piss-taking was relentless, and continued until polling day, when the Conservatives won a shock majority of 12 seats. Amber Rudd, the Conservative MP for Hastings and Rye where the unveiling took place, publicly thanked the EdStone for its role in holding her marginal seat. Nobody seriously thinks it was the EdStone that cost Miliband the election in the final days – polling inquests later confirmed that that they had overestimated Labour support throughout the campaign and the Tories were likely always ahead. The near-total collapse of the Lib Dems – down from 57 seats to just 8 – had also been unexpected, and unquestionably helped the Tories.
However, the image of the EdStone, like the bacon sandwich photograph where Miliband made a meal of his breakfast, perfectly illustrated what the public already suspected about his unsuitability to be prime minister. ‘It definitely reinforced negatives that people already felt about Ed,’ says one former aide. ‘There were bigger factors at play, but this was an image that captured them all together.’
It became a physical monument to the dysfunctionality of a party which was not ready for power. If that is what they come up with in opposition, a voter might have been forgiven for thinking, what would they do with the nuclear codes and the keys to the Treasury? Jon Snow, the Channel 4 News anchor, performed his own on-air eulogy: ‘Labour hoped it would be a hinge stone, many thought it was a henge stone, it was quickly tagged an #EdStone, but now it’s just a headstone.’
The blame game was brutal. Damian McBride, the former Brown spin doctor and henchman, knew who was at fault, tweeting: ‘For those who don’t know Torsten Bell, the #Edstone architect, he’s one of those arrogant oafs with brains to spare but no common sense.’ Months later Bell told the BBC: ‘Lots of ideas in the heat of politics come and go. We did a big service to British journalism by providing that level of fun and amusement for a considerable period.’ Pressed on the whereabouts of his brainchild, he replied: ‘I can’t tell you where the EdStone is but I can tell you that we will not be going into stonemasonry any time in the next few years.’
After Labour’s defeat a nationwide search was launched for the stone. The Sun set up a hotline, while the Daily Mail offered champagne to anyone with information regarding its whereabouts. The People’s History Museum in Manchester made a plea to add it to its collection. A version appeared at The Ivy Chelsea Garden restaurant, but this appears to have been a fake. Indeed, Labour insiders insist that it was destroyed soon after polling day. As was Miliband’s leadership – he resigned within hours. Even that was not the end of the saga.
In October 2016 Labour was fined a record £20,000 by the Electoral Commission for undeclared 2015 election spending, including the £7,614 spent on the EdStone. Making it one of the most expensive electoral suicide notes, as well as the heaviest. Maybe some balloons would have helped.
The car park in Hastings is one of my 50 Places That Changed British Politics.
Any other business
Meat and greet After seven months of asking, Kemi Badenoch came on my 5Live show this week. There was some expectation management over the local elections, though she insisted she would not resign whatever the results today. She also confirmed that she has four (FOUR!) sugars in her tea. And we discussed how she hates sandwiches (unless they “make an effort”) and when on the road she likes to have hot meal. “The team know that if there is a Toby Carvery on route, that we can stop the Toby Carvery and it's very quick, the food is ready.” Does she you go for one meat, two meats, three meats? “Different things different times sometimes multiple sometimes, just one depends on how I feel on the day but I like a hot meal at lunch.” Which is going straight into the stand-up show.
One and Only I took Chesney Hawkes to PMQs for 2PMQs. He is just out of the Celebrity Big Brother House, where a group of egotists compete for votes, so he felt at home in the Commons. One question, from Tory Mark Francois, was about putting up a statue to Dame Vera Lynn, a singer who had a long career but one song defined her for a generation. I wondered if Chesney could relate at all to the idea of singing an anthem which defined a generation? Time for a statue of him too.
Video games Legendary documentary maker Michael Cockerell profiled and interviewed the 12 prime ministers from Harold Macmillan onwards. I had a brilliant chat with him about the art of a political interview: come for Thatcher saying “I’m not a very hummer”, stay for Cockerell’s impression of Heath and Barbara Castle talking about flirting with Harold Wilson. Listen from 1:08:40
Wet, wet, wet As I mentioned on Sunday, I was off to a lesson at Raymond Blanc’s cookery school. I returned armed with a recipe for “Wet garlic and potato soup” but where do you find wet garlic? (Also known as green or young garlic, essentially a bulb pulled up earlier.) Nothing near us in Hampshire, but top BBC colleague Henry Zeffman is now my wet garlic dealer.
For two decades I have feasted on politics, stalking the corridors, pubs and restaurants of Westminster. Now I have all the ingredients to cook up a brand new show looking at parliament's feuding food factions and how politicians really are what they eat. From Keir Starmer’s fish and cheese, to Kemi Badenoch’s hatred of sandwiches, from Nigel Farage’s proper milk to Ed Davey’s fig rolls, everything (and everyone) is on the menu.
WARNING: Politics may contain nuts.
As seen on Have I Got News For You (BBC1), Newsnight (BBC 2) and Lorraine (ITV1).
30th June Norwich Playhouse
1st July Farnham Maltings
2nd July Bristol Redgrave Theatre
3rd July Lyme Regis Marine Theatre
4th July Oxford North Wall
7th July Canterbury Gulbenkian
8th July Newcastle The Stand
9th July Edinburgh The Stand
10th July Birmingham Glee Club
12th July Salford Lowry
13th July Cheltenham Town Hall
8 November Taunton Brewhouse
10 November London Cambridge Theatre
Well that will do for now. Do hit the like button if you liked it. If you didn’t like it, just keep it to yourself, alright?