Tag Archives: Miliband

Why is Keir ‘I hate tree-huggers’ Starmer gaining points over global warming?

Crete wildfires: unless action is taken, these fires will spread. Crops will fail and the UK will be unable to afford to buy supplies in from countries that will also be struggling. Your leaders know this and are doing nothing. You need different leaders.

UK opinion pollsters are recording an unlikely boost for Keir Starmer’s STP (Substitute Tory Part – formerly Labour) over climate change.

Despite the fact that he says he hates “tree-huggers” and wants the London ULEZ (Ultra-Low Emissions Zone) scrapped after he blamed it and not his own poor leadership on his party’s failure to win the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election, the i‘s Editor’s Choice newsletter tells me his party is enjoying a “bounce” of support over the issue:

Our poll results … show a Labour bounce after days of Conservative backtracking over net zero pledges. Sir Keir Starmer is now on 44% support, compared to the Tories’ 27%. If replicated at a general election would hand Sir Keir Starmer a ­landslide majority on a scale not seen since 1997.

Note that, like This Writer, the i can apparently no longer bring itself to refer to Starmer’s party as Labour!

But it isn’t all roses for the party that colours itself red. While

only 15 per cent trust Rishi Sunak to deal with this crucial issue. Sir Keir Starmer fares slightly better (21 per cent) but nearly half of those polled placed no trust in either of them – a stat that is hugely worrying.

As if the “era of global warming” wasn’t a serious enough threat, this week, the UN secretary-general declared that we had entered “the era of global boiling” after scientists confirmed that July was on track to be the world’s hottest month on record.

Our exclusive poll shows that three out of four people want action taken now – a figure that understandably ramps up among those aged 24 and under. It is their planet to take on, after all.

We all have our part to play in the climate fight but there is only so much we can do without governments around the world stepping up to the challenge. And that needs to start at home. Now.

And it’s not happening.

Instead – and for example – the Starmer party’s shadow Climate Change secretary, Ed Miliband, appeared on TV to push a false claim about its current policy:

Reeves recently withdrew her promise to spend £28 billion a year on tackling the climate crisis.

Her – and Miliband’s – party’s current policy on climate change is to do nothing. There’s a vague offer to spend some money on it after being in office for an unspecified number of years.

Let’s remember (again) that Starmer himself – their party’s leader – used the ULEZ (Ultra-Low Emissions Zone) in London as the reason his party couldn’t win Uxbridge and South Ruislip in the recent by-election there and has tried to pressurise London Mayor Sadiq Khan to scrap it (in fact it seems that discontent with his own leadership had more to do with the failure to win that seat).

It is his stance that has encouraged Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak to water down his own policies on climate change. So perhaps it is poetic justice that Sunak’s own poll ratings have plummeted as a result.

But none of this does anything to stop the “global boiling” that is happening as I type these words. Our home is burning to a cinder and the men and women in suits are squabbling about money as though it matters.

They seem to have forgotten that money is made by using the natural resources produced by our planet and its eco-system. Destroy that system and those resources – in the way that these people have been doing (and yes, I mean Keir Starmer, Ed Miliband, Rachel Reeves, Rishi Sunak and all the shadowy businesspeople who employ them) – and not only will there not be any more money, but whatever they have will not be worth anything.

While they argue over whether cleaning the planet is cost-effective – like the imbeciles they are – some of us have been pointing out the obvious flaw in their thinking:

If Sunak, Starmer and the other stuffed suits can’t get their policies in line with that, then we need to fill Parliament with people who can.

I mean, it’s only a matter of survival. Ask your non-political friends how their non-voting – or even tactical voting – philosophy measures up to that.


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How can Labour clean politics by mirroring the Tories?

Blue Labour: under Keir Starmer, a once-great socialist organisation has become nothing but the Substitute Tory Party.

This is the dilemma facing voters who want change at the next UK general election:

It’s a valid criticism. The truth of it is partially in the quality of the people Keir Starmer is attracting, after his changes (This Writer can’t call them reforms):

And the truth of it is in what Labour will do, if it takes office after the next general election:

In other words, Labour would follow Tory policy until such time as the economy improves (and you can bet that the economy won’t improve enough for Keir Starmer to introduce any socialist ideas, or indeed any measures that would improve the lot of the “ordinary working people” he claims to represent.

Think about what Labour has already said it will not do:

Add to this the fact that Labour won’t build more houses:

This is while 1.2 million people are waiting for social housing.

Then again, Labour will continue the privatisation of the National Health Service in England, even though 7.4 million people are waiting for NHS treatment as a result of this progressive mismanagement.

Keir Starmer himself seems to believe he is above the concerns of the people he reckons should be voting for him.

We saw him, last week, shutting up young environmental activists who tried to speak out during his policy announcement on how Labour wanted young people to be able to express themselves in speech. And he lied to them; after promising to meet them after his own speech, Starmer ran away.

Is it because he hates “tree huggers”?

He’s not interested in “hope and change”, you see:

The economist Richard Murphy has highlighted that Starmer’s “tree huggers” comment indicates not only that he isn’t interested in new economic and policy thinking about the issues the UK faces as a country, but that he and the rest of the Shadow Cabinet are far more right-wing than Ed Miliband – and Ed (bless ‘im) is himself hardly the socialist his dad was.

In the article, Mr Murphy states:

This is the attitude of a prospective Labour Chancellor who  questions whether we can afford to save the planet because it is instead better to crush the well-being of millions with unnecessary interest rate rises.

Reeves says she and Starmer are as one on issues. I suspect that for now that is true. It is deeply dangerous that such a reactionary pair are in that position and are described as the Opposition when it is so apparent that their goal is perpetuation of the status quo.

Link that with the words of Ian Hodson, below:

The consensus is clear: Labour is now nothing but a Substitute Tory Party. We should call it the STP from now on.

That’s one reason why this claim by the party’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, is hard to take seriously:

Labour is itself riddled with cronyism.

Look at its attitude to the scandal of Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list: where once Labour had planned to get rid of the House of Lords altogether, it has shelved the idea – and in any case would want to keep the honours system and the possibility of gifting a place in the second House of Parliament to its… cronies.

It is clear that Keir Starmer’s (and Rachel Reeves’s, and even Ed Miliband’s) party will not be representative of the people of the UK and will not give us the change we desperately need – in fact it will deliberately frustrate any such aim.

It can do this because of the current “First Past The Post” electoral system that ensures each of the two largest parties in Parliament have “safe seats” that they can expect to win at every election. Knowing that, cronyism ensures that these seats go to those who most strongly support the right-wing views of the leaders – never mind what they’re saying to the voters. They don’t have to listen to us.

And that’s why the UK is regressing; our so-called leaders aren’t interested in building a dynamic, go-ahead nation with a restored economy – they just want to ride us all into ruin and then take what they can for themselves.

The answer is clear to those of us who can see it. We need to change the voting system to root out the rot.

Don’t vote Labour at the next election. And don’t vote Tory either.

Vote for candidates who support proportional representation.

Vote for independents who understand the needs of your constituency.

And make sure everyone you know does the same. Starmer’s treachery means it is your only hope.


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No honour in Labour: Ed Miliband backstabs the man who defended his late father

He’s got your back: Ed Miliband is pictured behind Jeremy Corbyn – presumably working out where to put his knife.

Ed Miliband, whose father was defended by Jeremy Corbyn when the Daily Mail said he “hated Britain”, has shown his true colours by stabbing Mr Corbyn in the back.

In October 2013, after the Mail ran an attack piece against the then-Labour leader (Ed Miliband) by accusing his father, Mr Corbyn appeared on BBC News to defend him – as you can see:

Note also that Mr Corbyn was the only Labour MP to defend Miliband’s father publicly.

Today (March 28, 2023), as Labour’s NEC considers a motion by current Labour leader Keir Starmer to ban Mr Corbyn from ever again standing for election as a candidate for that party, Miliband also made an appearance on the BBC – to trot out yet again his leader’s tired and ridiculous whinge about anti-Semitism.

He said:

It’s about one thing, which is about Jeremy Corbyn’s reaction to the EHRC report on antisemitism and his refusal to apologise for that reaction. That is the background of this. I don’t think there’s any mystery about that.

There’s one problem with that: Keir Starmer’s motion does not mention anti-Semitism at all.

It is, therefore, entirely inappropriate for Miliband to trot it out as a reason for denying the members of Islington North’s Constituency Labour Party their democratic right to choose their candidate for Parliament.

Remember: Keir Starmer is on the record as saying he wanted to end NEC interference in local selections of Parliamentary candidates:

The move to bar Mr Corbyn is a clear betrayal of that promise.

So we see an honourable man – Mr Corbyn – backstabbed by not just one but two betrayers who are members of the Labour Party leadership. Doesn’t that tell us that Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is not worth your time? That it should be shunned, avoided, and vilified wherever possible?

Ironically, Miliband’s ill-intended comment about Mr Corbyn came the morning after his victim was outside Parliament, speaking at a rally against racism:

Finally: the reason that is actually given by Keir Starmer’s motion, for wanting Mr Corbyn’s candidacy to be blocked, is the fact that Labour lost an election under his leadership.

By that standard, Ed Miliband should also be barred. He was the leader in 2015 when Labour won a much smaller share of the national vote than in 2017 or 2019, when Mr Corbyn was in charge.

But he is a member of the Shadow Cabinet.

The double-standard could not be clearer.

Miliband’s treachery has certainly provoked a strong reaction from the public. I provide a selection below, for those of you who would appreciate further depth:

The facts are clear – and they mitigate against Keir Starmer, Ed Miliband, and all the other fetid liars infesting the corpse of a once-great political organisation.

I don’t think the NEC’s decision will even matter now. The damage has been done.

Starmer, Miliband and the others have shown that Labour will betray anybody.

If that party – in its current form – gets into government, that is exactly what it will do to you.


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Energy firms: Miliband sells Labour’s soul so asset-strippers profit from privatisation

Power and pollution: Ed Miliband wants government to take over failing energy firms, restore them to health at huge cost to the public purse, and then sell them back so the 1% can rip us all off again. Why should we, when they have done so little (for example) to tackle climate change?

Read Natalie’s response to Ed Miliband’s industrial-disaster interview with Andrew Marr, then watch the clip. Then read her response again.

She’s right, isn’t she?

Miliband was saying that Labour would take struggling private energy companies back into public ownership – that’s nationalisation, for those of you who are too young to remember when we had industries owned by the government. That’s fine.

He was saying Labour would then use public money – your money – to restore those concerns and improve them. That’s fine too.

And then he ruined it by saying Labour would then re-privatise them so profit-grubbing shareholders could once again suck out all the cash they could while failing to invest in the system or the service, knowing they can always rely on the government to bail them out in the future.

That is no way to run a country.

Energy privatisation has failed.

The owners of the privatised companies – one-third of whom are foreign governments – are charging us the Earth (literally, when you consider the climate change implications) for very little, and when they get into trouble they are handing the mess back to us to sort out.

That is not good business and there is no way any self-respecting government – of any colour – would accept it.

There’s certainly no reason any voter should put up with it.

Miliband has hammered another nail into the coffin of StarmerLabour’s election hopes.

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Starmer lies again: what did he mean by ‘public ownership’ if not nationalisation?

Liar: Keir Starmer backpedalled wildly on his leadership election promise to bring the privatised utility companies back into public ownership, when Andrew Marr challenged him in a TV interview.

Andrew Marr was quite right to call out Keir Starmer on his big nationalisation lie.

Back when he was seeking election to the Labour leadership, Starmer made 10 pledges. One of them was this:

We all took this to be a ‘continuity’ pledge for the renationalisation of the big utilities that we all use – as defined under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

But today (September 26) in an interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr, Starmer as-good-as admitted that this pledge was a lie.

Confronted with his original pledge, he said: “I don’t see nationalisation there.”

He went on to say: “Where common ownership is value for money for the taxpayer, then I am in favour of common ownership.”

Okay – what about gas, then? Gas prices are skyrocketing and the privatised firms are passing the shock on to consumers. If those companies were nationalised, then there would be no need for massive price rises as they could be rationalised into the future. Value for the taxpayer, right?

Starmer wouldn’t answer when Marr challenged him on this.

Of course, he had painted himself into a corner. His silly schoolboy essay had promised business leaders more privatisation and he couldn’t go back on that because he wants to be seen to be a “safe pair of hands” to take over Establishment interests when Boris Johnson’s Tories are no longer any good to the parasites.

It must be a real let-down for Ed Miliband, who was still claiming that fake, Starmer, Labour supports public ownership to the hilt on Newsnight last week:

In the light of Starmer’s lie, will Miliband turn himself into a liar?

Or will he agree that Starmer has betrayed a key pledge to party members – and to the nation?

For the rest of us, there should be no surprise at the fact that Starmer was lying when he said he would bring all those utilities back into public ownership.

All his other leadership pledges were lies, too.

And that raises an important point: Starmer was elected Labour leader on the basis of 10 pledges – promises to take particular actions as party leader. And he has since rejected all of them.

Doesn’t this indicate that he was elected on the basis of a tissue of lies?

If so, then shouldn’t he resign on the basis that he cannot be trusted, and another leadership election be called?

Source: Marr calls out Starmer on breaking renationalisation pledge – his excuse is unbelievable (video) – SKWAWKBOX

Labour challenges Johnson government to ‘Build it in Britain’ creating 400,000 new jobs

 

How pleasant to be able to report on something positive the Labour Party is doing.

The ‘green economic recovery’ was a Corbyn initiative, of course.

Ahead of this month’s Comprehensive Spending Review, Labour is calling for an economic recovery that will deliver high-skilled jobs in every part of the UK as part of the drive towards a clean economy. It is also calling for the low-carbon infrastructure of the future to be built in Britain.

Labour’s calls follow an extensive consultation with businesses, trade unions and other stakeholders around what a credible green recovery should look like, which received almost 2,000 responses. The consultation indicated that the Government must:

  • Recover Jobs
    By bringing forward planned capital investment and dedicating it to low-carbon sectors – at least £30billion in the next 18 months – as part of a rapid stimulus package to support up to an estimated 400,000 additional jobs.
  • Retrain Workers
    By putting in place an emergency training programme to equip people affected by the unemployment crisis with the skills they need for the future greener economy.
  • Rebuild business
    By creating a National Investment Bank similar to those operating in other countries, focused on green investment, and by ensuring that public investment always aids the drive to net-zero rather than hindering it.

The consultation report details a number of areas where progress has so far been limited in the UK, but where action now would support the creation of new jobs and tackle the climate and environmental crisis. They include:

  • Investing in upgrading ports and shipyards for offshore wind supply chains.
  • Expanding investment in Carbon Capture and Storage and hydrogen to help establish new opportunities for highly-skilled workers.
  • Accelerating planned investment in electric vehicle charging infrastructure and ensuring the planning system better supports electric vehicle charging.
  • Bringing forward orders for electric buses to help struggling manufacturers fill their order books.
  • Introducing a National Nature Service, an employment programme to focus on nature conservation projects.
  • Expanding energy efficiency and retrofit programmes, including in social housing.
  • Ensuring that updated Sector Deals for sectors like automotive, steel and aerospace protect jobs and promote the shift to net zero.
  • Bringing forward flooding protection investment, prioritising areas of need across the North West, Yorkshire and the East Midlands.

These should be delivered within a wider strategy that also meets the UK’s overall infrastructure needs at the upcoming Spending Review.

Ed Miliband MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, said:

“We face a jobs emergency and a climate emergency. It’s time for a bold and ambitious plan to deliver hundreds of thousands of jobs which can also tackle the climate crisis.

“This is the right thing to do for so many people who are facing unemployment, the right thing to do for our economy to get a lead in the industries of the future and the right thing to do to build a better quality of life for people in our country.

“As other countries lead the way with a green recovery, Britain is hesitating. It’s time to end the dither and inaction, and start delivering now.  It is what the British people deserve and what the crises we face demand.”

Anneliese Dodds MP, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, said:

“Labour is ambitious for Britain. We can harness the opportunities for green growth if the Government takes the right decisions now.

“In recent years, and particularly during this crisis, our country has fallen behind in the drive to a cleaner, greener economy.  We’ve seen far more rhetoric than action – and that has cost our country jobs.

“Future generations will judge us by the choices we make today to tackle the unemployment crisis and face up to the realities of the climate emergency.

“That’s why we need coordinated action to support 400,000 jobs of the future today, not tomorrow. Now’s the time to build it in Britain.”

Source: Labour challenges government to ‘Build it in Britain’ and support 400,000 new jobs with green economic recovery – The Labour Party

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Miliband masters Johnson in clash over Bill to break international law

Speech-less: faced with a barrage of factual accuracy from Ed Miliband, Boris Johnson sat, head bowed, with nothing to say.

Given that Boris Johnson had threatened to withdraw the whip from Tory MPs voting against his Internal Market Bill, one would have expected him to launch a spirited defence of it during the debate.

That expectation may be doubled in the knowledge that he was facing not Keir Starmer, who had run away to self-isolate after one of the children he sent to our “perfectly safe” schools exhibited Covid-19 symptoms, nor Angela Rayner, but Ed Miliband.

Certain commentators were betting on a knockout win for Johnson, against a man who famously botched eating a bacon sandwich.

They were completely wrong. Miliband metaphorically mashed Johnson’s derriere like burger meat and then fed it back to him.

The speech was probably the most golden moment of the political year.

“I have been part of many issues of contention across the Dispatch Box, but I never thought that respecting international law would be a matter of disagreement in my lifetime,” he said.

“As Leader of the Opposition, I stood opposite the Prime Minister’s predecessor David Cameron for five years. I do not know why the Prime Minister is rolling his eyes. I disagreed with David Cameron profoundly on many issues, but I could never have imagined him coming along and saying, “We are going to legislate to break international law” on an agreement that we had signed as a country less than a year earlier. Yet that is what the Bill does, in the Government’s own words.

“Is it right to threaten to break the law in the way the Government propose? Is it necessary to do so? Will it help our country? The answer to each question is no. Let us remember the context and the principle. If there is one thing that we are known for around the world, it is the rule of law.

“This is the country of Magna Carta; the country that is known for being the mother of all Parliaments; and the country that, out of the darkness of the second world war, helped found the United Nations. Our global reputation for rule making, not rule breaking, is one of the reasons that we are so respected around the world. When people think of Britain, they think of the rule of law.”

He continued as follows:

Mr Miliband said: “We respect the fact that the Conservative party, under this Prime Minister, won the election. He got his mandate to deliver his Brexit deal: the thing that he said was—I am sure she recalls this because it was probably on her leaflets—“oven ready”. It is not me who is coming along and saying it is half-baked; it is him. He is saying, “The deal that I signed and agreed is actually—what’s the word? Ambiguous. Problematic.” I will get to this later in my speech, but I wonder whether he actually read the deal in the first place.”

We found out the answer to that, didn’t we?

Here it is:

Boris Johnson has not even read his own Internal Market Bill.

Mr Miliband continued:

He wasn’t even halfway through his speech, and Miliband had destroyed Boris Johnson.

Remember at the top of this article I said Johnson could have been expected to deliver a spirited defence of this Bill?

He didn’t.

He just sat there and took it, shaking his head as though in disbelief.

And by the end, he looked older than his dad.

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David Miliband’s intervention over #LabourLeaks has only shown up his faction’s hypocrisy

Hypocrite: David Miliband.

I bet you find this tweet as amusing as I did:

https://twitter.com/ToryFibs/status/1292805261237911553

It is ironic, isn’t it? David Miliband, the darling of the Labour Right, regularly threatened to return to frontline politics and challenge Jeremy Corbyn during the latter’s leadership of the party.

Right-wingers in the party made successive attempts to wreck the Corbyn project through all five years of his leadership. I’ve managed to dig out a report of Mr Miliband making one such attack, from February 2017, months before Corbyn nearly won the 2017 general election (and we’ve all seen the evidence that it was sabotaged by Labour right-wingers by now). Consider:

Labour loses an extremely marginal seat and the right-whingers pull out David Miliband to criticise the leadership. It’s all so predictable.

… As was his message: A lie, based on apparent facts.

So he reckons Labour is further from power than at any time in the last 50 years. This may be accurate.

He reckons Labour’s situation isn’t a repeat of the 1980s. This may also be accurate.

But his conclusion – that Labour needs to become a right-wing party again, because he thinks socialism won’t address the problems the UK faces or get Labour elected, because he thinks watered-down Tory policies are what the public wants – is completely whacko-jacko.

Liam Young had it right, as This Site reported yesterday: Timidly copying Tory policies – failing to challenge them – is what has caused Labour’s problems. The party should be taking risks, pushing boundaries, and pushing radical ideas.

Labour’s decline in support isn’t because it has rejected right-wing policies; it is because New Labour ignored the working-class voters who have always been the party’s power-base – to such a degree that five million of them turned their backs on the party. Jeremy Corbyn has managed to bring some of them back but that process is being sabotaged by right-wing Labour MPs and commentators like Mr Miliband.

And those right-wingers need to be addressed – quickly. They cannot be allowed to continue backstabbing Mr Corbyn and Labour’s current direction.

It is clear that they want Labour to lose elections – why do you think Tristram Hunt and Jamie Reed resigned? They wanted Corbyn to lose both Copeland and Stoke Central – and are quite happy to allow homicidal Conservative policies to continue.

After all, they aren’t suffering; they’ll get another huge pay rise in April.

And Clive Lewis was right when he said that Labour needs to tackle a lot of vested interests, including those in the media who are desperate to keep Labour out of office…

And people like David Miliband, who say they are Labour but aren’t really Labour at all.

I’m quite proud of that article, looking back. It was prescient, pointing out that the right-wingers wanted Labour to lose elections and needed to be rooted out before they did serious damage to the party’s chance of winning elections.

My words were ignored. Factionalists in the party were accusing me of anti-Semitism at the time (as, indeed, they continue to do).

And now Miliband – hypocrite that he is – is back, accusing Corbyn of exactly the behaviour of which he was guilty back in 2017.

Ironic.

Miliband’s words themselves were, of course, utterly ridiculous. His claims about Labour’s losses in 2017 and 2019 ignore the facts we know – that he and his fellow right-wingers had been working hard to hold Corbyn back in both polls, and deny the claims that are being tested now.

What’s he going to do if those claims are proved true? His faction has never been quick to admit being wrong.

No doubt there are die-hards among the Labour right who are delighted with this intervention.

But the rational opinion is that he has made a fool of himself and everybody in his faction.

And some are not as polite:

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


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UKIP supporters claim Ed Miliband is Muslim and will introduce sharia law – Pride’s Purge

Just when you thought UKIP had gone quiet for good, here’s Tom Pride:

UKIP supporters – in the comments section of a photograph posted on the Facebook page of UKIP candidate Michael Wrench – are claiming Labour leader Ed Miliband is a Muslim and will introduce sharia law if he becomes PM:

150308ukip-miliband-muslim1

Yes, I know, I thought it was a joke too.

But when challenged and informed by an anti-UKIP poster that Ed Miliband is in fact Jewish – and an atheist – the UKIP supporter decided to expound on his unusual theory:

150308ukip-miliband-muslim2

Just to clarify, as far as I know, Ed Miliband’s wife Justine Thornton isn’t a Muslim either.

Anyway, there are a few other choice comments from other UKIPPERS on the same thread…

… but you’ll have to visit Pride’s Purge to see them.

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Naughty, naughty Daily Mail! Miliband story creates torrent of complaints

Daily Fail Logo

Cast your mind back to October last year and you may remember the big controversy was the way the Daily Mail shot off its (metaphorical) mouth about Labour leader Ed Miliband’s father in spectacular fashion – and spectacularly shot itself in the foot by doing so.

The ill-judged article – it claimed that Mr Miliband (senior), who immigrated here from abroad and loved his adopted nation, was “unpatriotic” – generated a storm of protest on factual grounds and built a groundswell of sympathy for Mr Miliband (junior).

Yesterday, the Press Complaints Commission released its monthly complaint summary for January 2014. The PCC is dominated by Daily Mail personnel – Paul Dacre, the Mail’s editor, sits on the PressBoF committee that dominates the PCC and also chairs the Editors’ Code Committee. Meanwhile, one of the three directors of the company that owns both the PCC and its planned successor, IPSO, is Peter Wright, editor emeritus at the Mail group – so it should be no surprise that the most interesting part of the report was tucked away at the end.

This was an acknowledgement that the PCC had received no less than 14 complaints from third parties (people not involved in the story) about the Ralph Miliband article, ‘The Man Who Hated Britain’. In its summary, Inforrm’s Blog stated: “We suspect this was one of the most complained-about stories of the last 12 months or so, but of course that’s not really clear from the PCC data.”

Thanks to the number-crunchers at Inforrm, we can see that the Daily Mail incurred 12 breaches of the Editors’ Code – more than double the five incurred by its nearest rival: The Mail on Sunday.

That’s right. Mail Group newspapers dominate the table with 53.1 per cent of the total number of breaches recorded against national newspapers and large regionals.

But it seems Inforrm is right to say the PCC exists “mainly to protect [its] paymasters from censure, keeping the public at arms length with a cynical strategy of ‘complaint’ fatigue’, that means Code breaches are not properly recorded and adjudications are avoided at all costs”. All the complaints against the Mail were said to have been resolved away with sufficient remedial action.

We learn two things from this:

  • The Press Complaints Commission is worse than useless at policing the UK’s print media.
  • The reading public is nowhere near as stupid as the Mail‘s bosses would like to think. People of all political persuasions genuinely despised the Mail for its treatment of Mr Miliband. Former Conservative cabinet minister John Moore said: “The Daily Mail is telling lies about a good man who I knew. The people of this country are good and decent too. They do not want the Daily Mail attacking the dead relatives of politicians to make political points.”

Will the Mail learn from this huge error?

Don’t count on it.

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