The main threat to UKIP’s chances in 2015 might be Ed Miliband's astonishing uselessness

Hopeless

Ed Miliband just gave the worst interview by any party leader in the whole of human history. Martha Kearney asked him a series of perfectly reasonable, not particularly difficult questions on Radio Four’s World at One earlier today which reduced the Labour leader to a stuttering, blustering, discombobulated wreck. I could have done better. You would certainly have done better. Practically any other Briton over the age of, say, five would have put in a more convincing performance.

This was like listening to a man trying to answer questions just after being told that his whole family has been kidnapped by Al-Quaeda. Or while trapped in the back of a burning car following a head-on collision. Or while suspended by a rapidly fraying rope from the top of Big Ben. Or while watching the moving bulges created by a dozen tarantulas crawling up the inside of his trousers. Or while being cradled by an enormous, amorous gorilla.

It was like listening to a rather dim thirteen year old who’s been volunteered at the last minute to represent the Labour Party in a school debate, and who doesn’t know anything about them or their “policies” – in fact, he doesn’t even know what the word “policy” means.

If you doubt me, have a listen to the interview on the excellent Guido Fawkes website, here.

An interviewee who barks the insulting, charmless assertion "What you don't understand" or its imperative variant "What you have to understand" has lost - it is as simple as that.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I’ve been faced the prospect of a tough interview, I’ve prepared for it by trying to imagine the hardest questions I’m likely to be asked and then figuring out some answers so I won’t be left goldfishing like a total fool when they’re put to me. I assume this is what 99% of people who can read without moving their lips go about things. Doesn’t always work of course, but it makes it less likely that you’ll wind up needing to change your name and move abroad afterwards to escape the shame.

What sets David Cameron and Ed Miliband apart from Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage is that the first two seem to have no idea why they wanted to lead their parties in the first place. Nick Clegg has two excuses: first, it was either him or that sensationally disgusting human being, Chris Huhne, and second, as one of the High Priests of the Cult of Absolute Equality, he wants every Briton to be and to own exactly the same as every other Briton. And Farage just wants Britain out of the EU.

David Cameron’s only excuse is that he probably felt he was the sort of well-educated, vacuous, personable, don’t-rock-the-boat, uninterested-in-politics sort of chap who’d make a pretty decent party manager in times of relative plenty. Then, of course, Mr. Ordure was introduced to Mrs. Fan, and Cameron found himself Prime Minister during the worst period of unplenty in British history, without any political or economic principles to guide him.

But Ed Miliband was a member of the government which actually produced the ordure and switched on the fan - furthermore, he was a supporter of Gordon Brown, the bogey-chomping, nail-chewing weirdo who did more than any other human being to drag us into the Slough of Economic Despond where we currently languish. Miliband must have known he didn’t have a clue how to put things right: so why did he want the job? Just to get one over on his slightly less strange brother? Surely he must have known that a weird-looking, weird-sounding, inarticulate, unprepossessing, not overbright wally like him would face daily humiliation at the hands of opposition politicians, the media, and all those appalling people in his own party. Surely the deluded little twerp didn’t for one moment imagine he’d been any good at the job!

Normally, a Tory Prime Minister facing such a pathetic opposition leader would be assured of another five years in office. But as Cameron managed not to gain an outright victory against Gordon Brown - yes, Gordon Brown! - nothing is certain. Cameron’s only hope is that those of us who’ve deserted the Conservative Party for UKIP in sheer disgust at his wetness will be so horrified at the prospect of this country being represented on the world stage by a man who makes Herman van Rompuy appear both manly and effective will vote return to the Tory fold in 2015, albeit holding our noses as we vote for Tarquin Bluesuit or Lucinda Limpwrist.

Oddly enough, I suspect the main threat to UKIP’s chances of electoral success in two years’ time might not be the promise of a referendum on Europe, or the undoubted dodginess of some of their candidates, or even the lack of a traditional election-winning  party machine – but rather the sheer, jaw-dropping uselessness of Ed Miliband.