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Something saccharin and how he'd giving it his best shot, and a smacker thank you to party loyalists. The incumbents of No.10 couldn't give away the keys to government even if they tried.
Politics gives rise to that psychiatric condition known to others outside it of "distinct disillusionment".
It's when you're bestowed with praise for being a perfect leader, while unbeknown to the nominee reasons that have little to do with their own ability.
Call it the Over-X factor. Once the judges praise an individual, they often run the risk of believing in their own magnificence only to come hurtling back and burrowing into earth with a phsssh of a thud.
As the Labour party prepare for the week in the news at their party gathering in Liverpool, what must activists be thinking, as council in some roman tragedy silently tuttut against him.
Until two months ago, Ed still looked like something out of a Disney character. He did what he could but it never stuck. How close did he come to being shown the door? We might never know, until the gamble of going up against the Murdocks presented himself.
Perhaps he had no choice. Last chance saloon and all that. But it won him credits, that in reality now, he still doesn't seem to know how to cash. Unless the cynical ploy of Uni fees being pegged to £6k is what he perceives to be a vote winner.
Why do people believe to possess something they don't; their delusional state screaming at everyone but them. At least King George VI had a stutter which accounted for an uneasy quiet across the auditorium.
That's because every potential incumbent enters politics and reach for the highest office looking like something of a nerd. They all learn on the job. They all try to convince us they are prime ministerial material.
Blair's Bambinism made him to inexperienced; Foots intellectualism suited ideologists but heavens what would he do if he got in. Cameron and co were the Bullingdon privileged. Even those who showed their metal were seen through understudy eyes. Winston Churchill just wanted to shoot em up.
There's a great film in the archives of a heist in the early 1900s, when the siege turns nasty and police corner the villains in a house that would eventually burn down, Churchill as Home Minister can be seen in old cine camera shot wielding a gun.
The summer hols appears to have done Ed some good though. He talks with the wind of a slalom behind him, jabbing at every point thumb pressed to index finger, and fixing his interviews with the stare that would make goats keel over an die.
Politics Media school course 101. If you close your interviewee down or come swiftly on their heels you negate any notion you're a ditherer. The electorate love that. Yes only if they're all jabawabers.
Trouble is Ed could do a Maggie, lower his voice range for a more masculine effect, and correct his posture so he looks inches taller, but is anyone listening as we shuffle our feet looking at the specks of dirt.
The conceit of the disillusionment means even if the patient is told they're still in denial. So to 2014 it will be, and the winner paradoxically will still be Mr Milliband.
For his loss and loss alone won't hide the fact that he led her majesty's opposition for so many years, and built up a small nest of supporters who will now acquaint him post-leadership with the hall of fame. History has a habit of being kind to those who falter. Milliband can count on that.
