The honeymoon is over

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By Conor Pope / @conorpope

Travelling southbound on the tube around 11pm on Tuesday night, I found myself sat opposite two teenagers about 15 or 16 years old. One was a slightly overweight, geeky boy, the other a slim, slightly embarrassed looking girl.

Clutched in the boy’s hand was a Rubik’s cube, which he appeared to be using as a flirtation method. “Right, so from here,” he enthusiastically explained, “you just need to turn it three times this way, once this way and then this one back this way. Yeah?” The girl replied, without looking, “Yeah.”

The boy sensed he was losing her, but knew it was too late to change from his chosen approach of seduction. Panicking, he looked her in the eyes as he explained what he was doing, asserting himself, trying as hard as he could to win her interest back around. He’d practiced this; he wasn’t going to get girls through good looks or charm, so he was going to focus on what he could do, and by God could he do Rubik’s Cubes. (I’ve been there, although my personal talent was a near-encyclopedic knowledge of ‘alternative’ music circa 2005-07. My Dad says his was learning to open a box of matches and lighting one with one hand.)

Then came one of the most beautifully sad, human moments I have ever seen.

The boy looked away from the girl and back down to the Rubik’s Cube. A look of terror and confusion sank into his face. “I… I don’t know what I’ve done… I’ve done it wrong,” he admitted.

He looked crushed. He’d had his chance and he’d blown it. His Rubik’s Cube solving ability was his best shot at impressing the girl and he’d messed up. He looked back towards her, his pleading eyes losing hope. She had her hand over her mouth and there were tears in her eyes and her body was convulsing uncontrollably. She was laughing.

Seeing this gave the boy a rush of excitement. He was an endearing failure! He could live with that. But even as he began to laugh with her his face showed signs of his coming dilemma. Where does he go from here? Does he stop with the Rubik’s Cube? Does he carry on doing it badly, playing the fool? Or would that be dishonest? Maybe he should turn it around, work out a way to fix it, and build up to a climactic ending by sorting out the mess he’d made and appearing a hero? Sadly, the train pulled into Tooting Broadway and I got off.

The boy’s predicament, however, left me thinking of an old Harold Wilson quote:

“The Labour Party is like a stage-coach. If you rattle along at great speed everybody is too exhilarated or too seasick to cause any trouble. But if you stop everybody gets out and argues about where to go next.”

Ed Miliband seems to find himself in a similar predicament. With his infinite policy reviews on infinite amounts of blank paper, he has dared to stop and encouraged people to get out and argue.

A master of the Rubik’s Cube himself, where does he go next? After poor results in Scotland a month ago, LabourList’s ‘State of the Party’ survey this week suggests that the grassroots are split about, well, everything: Libya, the ‘Progressive Majority’ and Miliband himself.

At the moment Ed is playing the long game. There are four more years to go and he doesn’t want to tie himself down to anything too soon. But he might need to start making some signs of where the party is heading. You can’t laugh on tube forever. At some point the girl stops giggling at your geekish clumsiness and you have to move on. Do you play the easy game and keep messing up the Rubik’s Cube, or do you try to win her around by fixing the mess, even though she thought that was boring before?

In the week he returns from his post-marriage holiday I don’t want to be the one to say this ugly, clunky cliche, but I can’t see anyway around it – Ed, the honeymoon is over.

PS. I fully accept any criticism that this article relies mainly on the metaphor that Ed Miliband is a prospective boyfriend, then concludes with one suggesting he is a newlywed. Sorry.