Paper insists assault on 'poisonous dogma' of Labour leader's father addresses questions of enormous public interest
The Daily Mail has expanded its assault on Ed Miliband, accusing the Labour leader of disingenuously presenting his complaint about its controversial profile of his late father.
The newspaper appeared unrepentant in the face of broad criticism on Wednesday in a fresh editorial that repeated its claim about Ralph Miliband's "disdain for Britain".
Wednesday's Mail reprinted an abridged version of Tuesday's editorial, which said readers would be "truly disturbed if they understood about Miliband's father's views".
It widened the attack on the Labour leader's deceased father with a double-page spread taking aim at his late friend the historian Eric Hobsbawm and tutor, Harold Laski, whom it labelled "intellectual apologists for Stalin".
The third wave of scrutiny by the Daily Mail came as sources close to Miliband said the MP had received more than 10,000 supportive emails over the row since the controversial profile was published, on Saturday.
The Press Complaints Commission is understood to have received more than 50 complaints from the public about the Mail's articles on Miliband, but it has not yet decided whether to launch a formal inquiry over the episode.
In an unapologetic editorial on Wednesday, the paper conceded that the Labour leader had struck a chord with many readers by leaping to the defence of his deceased father.
However, it added: "But while it is certainly astute PR for the Labour leader to present his complaint against the Daily Mail in purely personal and emotional terms, it is also a mite disingenuous.
"For as he is aware, this is not just a personal issue. It is a fundamental question of ideology and enormous public interest. Indeed, his father cannot be portrayed as an innocent private figure, irrelevantly dragged into the public arena.
"On the contrary, he was one of the foremost Marxist thinkers of his generation, an academic and author who devoted his life to preaching one of history's most poisonous dogmas."
The editorial argued that it was fair game to scrutinise the views of Ralph Miliband, a prominent Marxist historian who died in 1994, because he had been cited as an influence by a politician who hopes to be prime minister.
It quoted extracts, apparently from a 45-year-old Ralph Miliband, saying his "disdain for Britain" included "Eton and Harrow, Oxford and Cambridge, the great Clubs, the Times, the Church, the Army, the respectable Sunday papers".
The editorial continued: "What is so disturbing is that Miliband Jnr, with his plans for state seizures of builders' land and fixing prices by government diktat, appears to have absorbed so many of his father's ideas.
"Now he leads the charge for political control of the Press, calling for a national debate on how newspapers should conduct themselves. Very well. But the Mail would also welcome a dispassionate and honest debate on the views of his father and their influence on Britain's would-be Prime Minister."
In a double-page spread, the newspaper carried a report on the war of words alongside an abridged version of Tuesday's provocative editorial column and a selection of readers' views, both for and against Miliband.
The historian Michael Burleigh wrote a lengthy feature on the Soviet gulags under the subheading: "In Hampstead parlours, intellectual apologists for Stalin like Ralph Miliband's great friend Eric Hobsbawm and his tutor Harold Laski loved talking in abstractions as millions died in horror".
On Tuesday night, the Daily Mail's deputy editor, Jon Steafel, refused to retract the paper's attack, telling BBC2's Newsnight it was reasonable to highlight the past writings of a man who appeared to be "very antipathetic to the views of a lot of British people".
Criticism of the paper continued unabated on Wednesday, however. The bishop of Bradford, Nick Baines, said it was "suggestive innuendo and ridiculous association" to link Ralph Miliband's views with those of his son.
"The heart can only despair. The Daily Mail has a low enough view of humanity, but its piece on Ralph Miliband is execrable," he wrote in a blogpost. "Its decision to print the original hatchet job alongside Ed Miliband's response – standing by every word of its nasty 'critique' – unbelievably crass."
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