The Daily Mail

There is a bit of a spat going on in the British press between David Milliband and The Daily Mail.

The root of the problem is an article in the Mail essentially maligning  David's father Ralph. 

Very briefly, Ralph fled Belgium in 1940 as a 17 year old as the German forces invaded.  He had two strikes against him as he was not only Jewish but also a Marxist. 

As a 17 year old in England, and more importantly as a Marxist who by definition was against nationalism- certainly National Socialism, but actually nationalism of any sort as he felt it was one of the most virulent causes of war. 

The stink in the whole affair is that as a 17 year old he kept a diary in which he wrote how disturbing he found it that the English were so nationalistic and that it almost  made him wish they would lose the war. He did go on to join the British merchant navy and fight the scourge of National Socialism.

Now it must be said that he remained a Marxist, studied and then taught at the London School of Economics and as such never mellowed in his views of nationalism and capitalism.

For these reasons, the Daily Mail thought it only correct that they "expose" him and visit the sins of the father onto the son, in this case "Red Ed Milliband" as they name him.

Despite the fact that even the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron came out against the article the Daily Mail has not really backed down issuing an apology side by side with an abridged reprint of the original article attacking both the Millibands again as decidedly anti-British and wanting to essentially enslave the British population in a gulag style Stalinism.

Interestingly, one of the sources that the Daily Mail uses to indict David Milliband as a Marxist in his father's footsteps is Damian McBride, the disgraced former spin doctor for Gordon Brown.

The same Damian McBride that the Daily Mail described that although he was "destroyed by his own malign tactics” and by “spreading a series of mendacious allegations about prominent Tories”, he is clearly a man of integrity whose insights should be taken as fact. (my bold text).

Need I say more?