Russell Brand spent the most part of the latter half of 2014 telling every person he engaged with –mostly young people, who don’t vote that much anyway – not to vote. His theory is that we needed a ‘revolution’. But his revolution never came.
That’s why we’re not entirely surprised that ‘Red’ Ed Miliband – definitely more left than most Labour leaders we’ve recently seen – has been spotted visiting revolutionary Russell’s east London home in the middle of the night.
Twitter user Elisa Solaris uploaded an image to the site: ‘A friend of mine lives opposite Russell Brand and snapped this picture of Ed Milliband leaving his house... urm’
No one knows what they were talking about (maybe it was their shared cult status as sex gods?), how long they were there (Russell does go on a bit) and how many words over five syllables Russell dropped into the conversation.
But we guess Ed might have been there – in the middle of a whirlwind campaign that sees him visiting the entire country – to pick up the sympathy vote. The comedian recently said that Ed was being ‘bullied’ by the right-wing press because he doesn’t ‘come across as normal’.
He said, in The Daily Express: ‘You know they use that word wonk to describe people that use political language, he’s sort of wonky but he’s wonky in loads of ways, it’s like he embodies wonkiness.’
Does the sympathy go both ways? Yes, sort of. Ed recently told Shorlist: ‘I definitely want people to vote – and I want people to vote Labour, obviously – but it’s really important that we engage people in the election.’
He added: ‘People criticise Russell Brand, and I don’t agree with his message, but what he’s saying, a number of people are thinking.’
Is everyone else thinking what we’re thinking? That fight-the-system Russell might have found an ally within it? Could he convince hundreds of thousands of his fans and followers to vote at such late notice (the voter registration deadline has passed), and to vote red? Watch this space…
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.