The rush by the right-wing media to canonise the defeated David Miliband is nauseating. They love him so much, they've even shelved the infamous banana picture. Today's Times front page headline is "Labour's Lost Leader", with a large picture showing Mili-D and his wife outside their home, looking (in Leonard Cohen's words) "like their father or their dog just died".
If I were a Labour Party member, the fact that the Murdochs and the Barclay brothers had been urging me all thorugh the campaign to vote for Mili-D would have seemed like the best possible reason to vote for just about anyone else.
Meantime, the campaign of vilification against "Red" Ed Miliband is already at fever pitch, with little regard for consistency. According to the Times, he's not showing leadership qualities, but at the same time he's been ruthless in imposing his own choice of Chief Whip. Meanwhile, over at the Telegraph, he's an unreconstructed lefty, but at the same time he's a liar because he's already backing away from the socialistic promises he made to get elected.
Are these papers really surprised that Labour picked a left-leaning candidate? After what the economy's been put through in the past few years in the name of "free market principles", the big surprise is surely that they didn't make a much sharper lurch to the left. It wouldn't be a big surprise if they took a chunk of the electorate along with them, either. Given the rush to trash "Red Ed", that may well be exactly what the Times and Torygraph are afraid of.
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