

Breaking news: Thirty MPs. and almost the entire nation demand that Cameron stands down. UKIP defectors say he’s not leadership quality, and can’t eat a chip butty without looking stupid, and Lynton Crosby blames Labour…

Odd, isn’t it, that the media didn’t declare that Cameron’s leadership is in crisis, recently, with the two high profile UKIP defections.

Rumour-mongering in the media, paraded as newsworthy headlines, about “discontent” over Miliband’s leadership is based almost entirely on two cowardly backbenchers – who have curiously chosen to remain anonymous and thus remain conveniently unquotable – grumbling about Miliband.

Welcome to the new era of media-amplified political campaigning Crosby-style: the politics of spite.

Not only is this malicious approach meant to be potentially profoundly damaging to Miliband, but to candidates and of course, to the millions of people that are suffering enormously under the current regime, who desperately need a Labour government. It’s an attempt to divide the party and its supporters. But isn’t that what the Tories always do?

I wonder if the positive comments about Miliband and the support from Labour shadow minsters will make it into the mainstream media, after all, these far outnumber the comments of a pair of anonymous backstabbers. I somehow doubt it.

Tristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary, said Miliband was on course to become an “innovative, reforming, radical” prime minister.

Miliband is being so viciously but insubstantially attacked, and on such a superficial level, precisely because he is the most left-wing leader of the Labour party for decades.

The right-wing and their lackeys in the media are engaged in an all out propaganda war. Firstly they right know that Ed Miliband has edited their script, abandoning the free-market fundamentalist consensus established by Thatcherism in favour of social democracy. Secondly, the right-wing media barons who set the terms of what is deemed politically palatable in Britain have never forgiven Ed Miliband for his endorsement of Leveson, which they believe is an unacceptable threat to their power. Thirdly, they know Labour under Ed Miliband is set to win the 2015 election.

Socialism for a Sceptical Age, by Ralph Miliband was about the continued relevance of socialism in a post-communist world. Ed Miliband has said that the final few sentences of this book are his favourites of all his father’s work:

“In all the countries there are people in numbers large and small who are moved by the vision of a new social order in which democracy, egalitarianism and co-operation – the essential values of socialism – would be the prevailing values of social organization. It is in the growth of their numbers and in the success of their struggles that lies the best hope for mankind.”

“Socialism is not a rigid economic doctrine, but ‘a set of values’ It is ‘a tale that never ends’. Indeed, the strange fact is that while there’s capitalism, there’ll be socialism, because there is always a response to injustice.” Ed Miliband. (Source – The moment Ed Miliband said he’ll bring socialism back to Downing Street .)

This provides a good insight into what Miliband is all about.

And he’s right.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, and Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, said the speculation in the Times was a lie.

Andy Burnham told Sky News: “The stories in today’s newspapers are complete and pure fiction. There is not a shred of truth in them.

What I think it’s part of is a deliberate and desperate attempt to destabilise the Labour party and to divide us. But I can say this: it won’t work. We are a united team, we are united behind Ed.”

Rachel Reeves said: “A Labour government will make a huge difference to the lives of millions of people. But we’ll only get one if we stay united behind Ed Miliband.”

Chuka Umunna, the shadow business secertary, hailed Miliband for taking Labour to within “touching distance” of government. In his blog on the PoliticsHome website he wrote: “We have a leader who has kept us united and overseen the renewal which so eluded us at the end of our time in government. Ed is an honest, sincere man of deep beliefs, and these are just some of the reasons why I backed his campaign to become leader. In an era of extreme scepticism about politics, these are not qualities most people attribute to politicians. What is too often not remarked upon is that these are qualities which people – even our political opponents – attribute to Ed.”

I agree entirely. Miliband is consistently honest and has shown integrity. And another one of Miliband’s greatest virtues is that he re-humanises politics. For him, people’s individual experiences matter, and he always cites many examples throughout his speeches. He includes qualitative accounts from real people. It’s a particularly contrasting quality to Cameron’s unempathic, dehumanising, quantitative, scapegoating, and negative labelling approach.

As I have previously said, the Tories always strive to foster divisions, or the illusion of them. One of their approaches has been to perpetuate an impression that MPs are “allthesame”. This myth came straight from Tory HQ.

BBC’s Tory correspondent Nick Robinson admitted live on air that Cameron’s best chance of winning the next election is if people believe politicians are “all the same”. But that is very clearly not the case. I think one major ploy has been to use propaganda based on an exclusively class-based identity politics aimed at the “working class”: an approach that UKIP have most overtly tried to adopt. The Tories are more about subterfuge and covert propaganda.

Identity politics purposefully excludes other social groups and also sets them against each other, for example, working class unemployed attacking migrants – it’s really is divisive, anti-democratic, and quite deliberately flies in the face of Labour’s equality and diversity principles. That’s the problem with identity politics: it tends to enhance a further sense of social segregation, and it isn’t remotely inclusive.

Of course it also enhances the myth of “out of touch”/ “allthesame”. It’s a clever strategy, because it attacks Labour’s equality and inclusive principles – the very reason why the Labour movement happened in the first place – and places restriction on who ought to be ‘included’. Think of that divisive strategy 1) in terms of equality. 2) in terms of appealing to the electorate 3) in terms of policy. Note how it imposes limits and is reductive.

Only a year ago, even the Torygraph stated that Ed Miliband is proving himself to be a brave and adroit leader. If Mr Miliband is remembered for nothing else, his stand on Syria changed the course of history. The Murdoch media empire, propagandarising for the US-led wars of the last two decades, is now isolated in its obsessive screeching for military action, and the fact that MPs ignored the bellicose pro-“intervention” editorials in Murdoch papers is a clear indication as to just how much they are declining in influence.