The biography of a nobody

A biography of Ed Miliband has to try hard not to be the sort of thing one buys as a present for someone one avidly dislikes. This effort, the first in what its authors seem (perhaps optimistically) to imagine may be a long series of accounts of their subject’s life, does not try hard enough. It has detail — Messrs Hasan and Macintyre boast of a million words of interview transcripts — but in the end it is, plainly and simply, stultifyingly boring. I am not sure this is entirely the writers’ faults. Before reading their book, I thought Mr Miliband was simply oversold, a man born to disappoint. Now I realise that he, and therefore an account of his life, is boring too.

The authors seem to like their subject, though there are moments of what pass for objectivity in their description of his uninteresting life and tedious times. What is lacking altogether is humour, except unintentionally, as when we are told with great gravity that ‘Gladstone’ coined the phrase ‘greasy poll’. One wades through a sea of earnestness so thick that after just a few pages one is crying out for relief.

The writing style is heavy with adjectives, adverbs and clichés. Attempts are made to entice the reader into believing the story is in fact exciting, notably at the ends of chapters where the authors attempt what the soap-operas call a ‘cliff-hanger’ ending. Perhaps one is supposed to possess a heart of stone not to be thrilled by such lines as: ‘But in 2005, a leadership bid was a long way off, and despite his considerable success in Doncaster, Ed Miliband still had a political — and personal — mountain to climb.’