Viral Ed Miliband superfan announces engagement to politician’s lookalike

Thousands followed Abby Tomlinson’s social media account at the time of the 2015 general election

The founder of an online movement of young Ed Miliband fans has announced she is engaged to the former Labour leader’s lookalike.

Abby Tomlinson was 17-years-old when she launched the #Milifandom in the run up to the 2015 general election. She gained thousands of followers at the time and got to meet the politician in the process.

On Monday (11 August), Tomlinson revealed she is going to marry someone who was once mocked for looking like Miliband.

She shared the news in a TikTok video soundtracked to the viral Pink Pantheress song “ILLEGAL”, which is commonly used on social media in posts detailing examples of unlikely pairings.

Tomlinson is introduced in the clip as “girl who went viral for fancying Ed Miliband,” with the video then flipping to her partner, a Miliband lookalike. The caption then reads: “Boy who got made fun of for looking a bit like Ed Miliband.”

She wrote on the post: “His first words to me were: ‘Are you the Milifandom girl?’ Now we’re engaged.”

Tomlinson’s followers were happy to see her active on social media again, with one person writing: “Oh my god. This is the update I did not know I NEEDED in my life. Congrats.”

Miliband was seen as a nerdy, less charismatic version of his brother David, when he ran for prime minister against David Cameron in 2016. However, he had a last minute revival among young teenage girls who spawned several fan accounts dedicated to him.

Ed Miliband’s awkward demeanour spawned an unlikely fandom (Getty Images)

His status as a sex symbol came as a surprise to him, gasping when shown a picture of his face photoshopped onto a topless picture of Poldark, by The Independent in 2015. The politician eventually met Tomlinson for lunch, an event she described as “one of the best moments of my life”.

However, his wife seemed less inspired by the movement.

“I said to her, ‘there’s this thing called the Milifandom,’ and she rolled her eyes, as if to say, ‘I can’t quite believe it,’” Miliband told the Evening Standard. “I think she’s a bit bemused by it, to be honest.”

Tomlinson said at the time: “The tabloids were saying, ‘He’s weird, he looks funny eating a bacon sandwich.’ They made him out to be the village idiot. It made me really angry.”