Ed Miliband’s a Leeds United fan – the dirtiest tabloid smear yet…
As the General Election draws closer, and the various tax-dodgers, fox-hunters and perverts who form the natural band of Tory supporters start to gibber quietly with barely-restrained panic, the brainless yet powerful moguls behind the country’s filthiest gutter rags are casting about for more dirty tricks to use against the Great White Hope of the Labour Party, Edward Samuel Miliband.
Great White Hope?? I hear you expostulate, outraged in your righteous anger. Isn’t that a bit – well – racist?? No, not at all – not in this context. Definitely not. Ed, you see, is a Leeds United fan – a true White – as well as the person adjudged this morning by the Financial Times as having an 82% chance of being the next Prime Minister. So May the 8th, or a few coalition negotiating days after that, could see our new leader giving the old Leeds salute on the doorstep of Number 10. It’s a thought to conjure with, right enough.
Meanwhile, the gutter press are unlikely to miss a trick in their quest to find any nasty little fact or fiction with which to smear the unflappable Ed – something they seem ever more desperately eager to do, despite the line being peddled not so long back that Miliband was a figure of fun and unelectable, so why bother. The Tories and their poodles in the Press are suddenly very much bothered and more than a little rattled and threatened – they need something salacious, scandalous or just plain unpopular to sling at the man who threatens to oust current incumbent David Camoron from his unelected tenure in Downing Street.
And what, in the dim and undemanding public mind, could be more disgusting or repellent than a chap being outed as a Leeds fan? We’re still the club they love to hate – still the name that pillocks such as Jimmy Greaves and various other has-beens can barely bring themselves to spit out with all the venom at their command. Unpopular doesn’t really begin to describe it. Leeds United, as an institution, is marginally less palatable for Joe and Jill Public than a slug sandwich.
And yet, so far, the Daily Heil and its bottom-feeding brethren at the sewer end of Fleet Street have failed to make capital of this. Instead, they’re concentrating on other, seemingly less damaging issues. Not all that damaging to Miliband, anyway. Today, it’s a peculiar non-story about the Labour leader’s love-life prior to his thirteen-year relationship with barrister Justine Thornton, his wife since 2010 and the mother of his two children Daniel and Samuel. It’s a shocker that, isn’t it? 45 year old man had relationships before he met his wife. A heinous crime.
Really, it’s just too laughable for words – and resounding testimony to just how worried the Tory press has become of late. The Daily Heil, by the way, is owned by Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere – who, interestingly, is a non-dom – a category of tax avoiders who have been much in the news this past day or so. The fact that the gloves are now coming off may not be entirely unrelated to this issue.
So it is laughable – except for the people incidentally involved in the revelations about Miliband’s pre-current relationship history. One of those people just happens to be a woman who was recently bereaved of her husband and is therefore currently going through a very dark and lonely time indeed. She’ll need all the sympathy and support she can get right now – but there she is, on the front page of Viscount Rothermere‘s toilet roll of a so-called newspaper, being shamefully exploited because Jonathan Harmsworth doesn’t want a Labour government interfering with his opportunist taxation arrangements. Pass the sick bag, do. The reference in this article to Ed Miliband and his impeccable choice of football club is intentionally light-hearted – but really, I’d rather they used that, for all the good it would do them – instead of intruding so callously on the grief of a woman whose only “crime” is once to have been involved with the man who will probably be our next Prime Minister.
I want Ed Miliband to be the next Prime Minister. We all should really – we’re all Leeds, aren’t we, after all? And yet I’m aware that, in the demographic of Leeds United support, that ain’t necessarily so. There are plenty of you out there who, for reasons I just can’t begin to fathom (unless you really are slavish believers of tabloid tripe), intend to do all they can to vote this incompetent and corrupt shower back into the power they should never have had their hands on in the first place. Which, I feel, is a shame.
But if I can do my bit, through Life, Leeds United, the Universe & Everything, to highlight some of the nasty-minded, shamefully-motivated tricks that are currently being played by the rich and powerful to protect their own vested interests – then this article will not have been in vain. If it results in just one or two people thinking for themselves, instead of believing what they’re being fed by self-interested and greedy owners and editors, then all of the pixels and fonts thus invested will have been worthwhile; indeed, cheap at the price. Especially if that all ends up with a tick going in what I firmly believe to be the right box on May 7th.
Ed for PM! Let’s have a Leeds fan in Number Ten, not least because it will further annoy and discomfit all of those rabid Whites-haters around the country and the world. For all the right reasons, of which there are many – and even some of the less serious and more light-hearted ones –
VOTE LABOUR THIS TIME.
Life, Leeds United, the Universe & Everything 
Ed Milliband a leeds fan – first Ive heard of it!
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‘Struth mate, honest.
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Alright Weherby…MOT/YRA
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I knew there was something I liked about you apart from the excellent scribing.We could be brothers from another mother.Never have I heard such venom spewed on to the Chipping Norton bunch,other than myself,its uncanny.The Daily Shite makes the Viz look classy.Eds white as well,? bugger me its christmas.Iff this lot get in again ,all the kids better slim down to climb up the chimneys.It will be Compulsory forlock touching and baseball cap doffing throughout the north.They can just bow in the south.
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It’s like reading my own mind 😂 Mind you – Viz IS classy…
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Itis out fer the lads…hee,hee
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Spot on Rob. There are some outrageous, nasty and malicious tricks bring played out in the Tory ranks. But, remember that they are the joke party, the ignoramuses and on a short term tenancy at No 10. Soon to be banished from their positions, they are wounded and dangerous creatures of greed! Spit!
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Sensitively put 😊👍
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Really worried we are going to end up with a ukip tail wagging a Tory dog, even if as looks likely labour actually win.
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Cameron must be a scummer, he comes from their traditional heartland of the rural south
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ummmmm…well if I heard that Ed Milliband had proclaimed recently to being a leeds fan Id take it with a rock of salt! Id lay a large wad of cash that hes never been to ER and knowS f**k all about the club and its history. The working classes lost football years ago to Sky and prawn sandwich munchers, the last thing it (we) needs is posh boys like Milliband jumping on the bandwagon.
Superimpose Milliband for John Thompson in the brilliant fake football fan sketches on the Fast Show.
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Career cynic #1
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Hes the least posh of the 4 leaders, the only one that went to a comp the other 3 are landed gentry and went to public schools
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As a southerner and obviously pidgeon holed as a Tory sympathiser I felt the need to check this story out. It’s true! Albeit he confesses some loyalty to Doncaster Rovers too.
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I’d rather cut my nob off than vote for that numpty
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I have a knife you could use? It’s a bit short, but it’d do a job on a Tory nob. A bit rusty too, but hey 😊👍
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Rob, nothing to do with whats written above but what is the crack with Cardiffs ticket arrangement? No one seems to want to explain the reasoning behind & I find it hard to understand. Fair play to them for staying home tbh
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I’m afraid all this means to me is a chance to take the piss.
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Rob, are you Michael Fallon in disguise!
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Never heard of him 😂
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Feel free (as long as your taking the piss out of them & not me?!!)
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You know it 😊👍
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Well God help us if we don’t get rid of this scum goverment,sorry,unholy union! I was going to vote Labour anyway but it’s a must now i know he’s one of us. They couldn’t smear him for eating a sandwich ungracefully,or making out he’s a geek so they sink even lower. Smug (and very rich wouldn’t know a day’s work Cameron) OUT! Never thought i’d see anyone as bad as Thatcher.
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Top man Mr D 👍
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Rob!! Nooooo!!!! The blokes a fuckin gimp, Leeds or not. Sorry, we’re all entitled to our opinion. Let’s keep it football and slagging scummers. I’ll be voting for Cameron (I can picture ur face!)
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So we’re all entitled to our opinion – but I should stick to football and scum-baiting? Typical Tory 😂
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Knew you’d bite. What’s a typical tory then?
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Why, one whose vote is all about self-interest rather than the common good. Thought everyone knew that?
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I’ll be voting for the Leeds fan even if he was a scummer.
Typical Tory = Paedophile
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Heyup lads. Had given up voting altogether as whatever way you vote yer still get the government, but this information has given me hope. MOT/YRA and three points today
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milliband sat at ER (after extensive use of sat nav) when other team scores-leaps to his feet “Good Goal Sir”!”
(Fast show sketch-you gotta watch it!)
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But out of all of them, Ed’s the one from the state school system.
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Rob,
Thats not what I’ve read…..didnt he and his brother go to one of those toffee nosed uppercrust edifaces?Same-same as george and David?…….and dont think he even knows really where Leeds is
Don
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That’s what happens when you read Tory lie sheets then I guess 😉 Stick to #LLUUE and get the truth!
Ed probably DOES know where Leeds is as he lived there for a large chunk of a childhood in which his Dad’s work as a roving teacher meant a lot of moving around. He attended state schools in Leeds and London (Haverstock Comprehensive) before finishing his education at Oxford University and the LSE.
Sorry to burst the Daily Mail bubble!
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Political leaders should think really hard about commenting about ‘footballing loyalties’, remember the shit storm whirling around Tony Blair’s head when he was misquoted about sitting at the gallowgate end and watching Jackie Milburn play, it has since been corrected but not before a lot of scorn derision and partisan giggling ensued, the original tape was eventually found and played while a nervous Tony Blair sat in the room, to bring this to a conclusion I am finding it very hard to decide who would get my vote, Labour spent money like it was going out of fashion with a certain Mister Byrne leaving a goodbye note in a drawer for Osborn to pick saying “the money’s all gone”. While the pack of galoots currently in power don’t fill me with confidence either, what does that leave us? A ukipper a greeny or join the biggest voting block out there of none of the above, just sayin’ is all. still love your columns they are guaranteed to brighten my days. MOT, once a white always a white, it’s in the DNA..
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