Ten minutes after I arrive at the hotel room I hear a knock at the door.
“Come in.”
Miliband walks through the door and sits across from me.
“Hola, my friend.” He says, tilting his oversized sombrero at me.
“So, Ed… Can I call you Ed?”
“Call me whatever you like, amigo. Just don’t call me late for dinner.” He replies, as he removes his pink “flower power” sunglasses and places them on the table.
“Ed, can you start by telling us a little about your life as a backbencher?”
“Well, it’s not so much life as a journey. My journey started after the election when I took a trip to Ibiza and I realised that life is about so much more than winning elections.” He takes a metal flask out of his pocket and pours its contents into the glass of coke in front of him.
“Helps with the journey.” He says. I urge him to go into specifics.
“Can you tell me what the past year has been like for you?”
“Don’t focus on the past, man. Life is a journey of a thousand steps and you gotta focus on the next, you know?” He removes his sandals and stretches his feet onto the table. He reaches into his jacket and removes some nail clippers. I continue with the questions.
“What are your aspirations for the future, Ed?”
“You can’t always get what you want, amigo. You just roll the dice and see which fish come out of the ocean.” I turn towards my notes and then look back around and see Ed with a small leaf-emblazoned grinder in his hands.
“You have to feed the geese to keep the blood flowing, man.” He says as he retrieves some rolling paper from his pocket.
“When I was in Ibiza it wasn’t about Left versus Right, austerity versus investment. It was about people coming together.” He coughs as he takes a puff. “It wasn’t about man, it was about society.”
“What does that actually mean?” I ask.
“You can throw a flower, but you can’t sniff a brick, you know?” Ed takes out his iPhone and starts playing a remix of Bob Marley’s “One Love”.
“Tune.” He mumbles to himself.
“I think maybe we should cut it here.”
“You can’t cut short life. It goes on without us and in then end we become completely lost in it like teardrops in rain.” He takes a heavy drag. “Good stuff.” He exhales and picks a Cheeto off the edge of his sombrero, staring longingly at it.
“Listen to my podcast, man. It’s jokes!” He shouts, as I slam the hotel door behind me.
Owen Jones
A version of this article appeared in CG Issue 60.