Better Eds than Red

Given Ed Miliband’s need to shake off the silly ‘Red Ed’ tag, we at Freemania Rhyming Consultants have been hard at work brainstorming more voter-friendly yet equally catchy nicknames for the new leader:

• Bed Ed - Nick Clegg first came to public notice by claiming to have slept with 30 women, and now he’s Deputy Prime Minister. We calculate that a revelation of 60 former lovers will therefore help to catapult Ed into the top job.
• Bled Ed - To counter fears that Ed is too much of a softy, we will create the image of him as a tough street fighter who has suffered numerous horrific wounds but still keeps coming. Alternatively, this could reassure adherents of medieval medicine that Ed is free from noxious humours.
• Bred Ed - David Cameron’s posh heritage has clearly impressed the voters, so promoting Ed as a toff with good breeding is bound to help (NB this may not help to distinguish him from David).
• Dead Ed - Zombies, vampires and the like are increasingly common in popular culture. The implication that Ed may be such a denizen of the underworld could help with certain segments of the youth vote. We may need to target the use of this one quite narrowly.
• Fed Ed - You can’t run the country on an empty stomach, so the public will need to be reassured that Ed has had a proper dinner in this age of austerity. This is a particular concern to address given that 37% of British mothers, on being shown a photo of Ed, believe him to be “a boy at my son’s school”.
• Head Ed - Our personal favourite, conveying a simple but effective air of authority and leadership. Also a subtle dig at Ed Balls, which is always fun.
• Lead Ed - Maggie had great success as the Iron Lady, and our Psephological Metallurgy Department’s research finds that lead is the substance swing voters most look for in a modern leader.
• Shed Ed - Labour needs to demonstrate that it has shed its old Blairite/Brownite baggage, and also to appeal to men who like sheds.
• Sped Ed - Very fitting, given Ed’s meteoric rise and the implied speed with which he seeks to transform his party and his country in years to come. (Why a rise is said to be meteoric when what meteors actually do is fall to Earth is a question we have referred to our Metaphor Aptness Department.)
• Wed Ed - This is a possible future direction, should Ed and his partner Justine decide to rebut the Mail’s “living in sin” sneers by marrying. We’re currently looking into how David would perform in the electoral college Labour uses to select the leader’s best man.