Ed Miliband has given a series of interviews this morning (and last night to LabourList), reflecting on an extraordinary week for him. In all of his appearances, he emphasised that when he responded to the Daily Mail’s attack on his father, he was “speaking as a son, not as a politican”.
“My dad’s not alive anymore, he can’t speak, but I can and that’s why I did what I did,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live.
While some have suggested that this is a battle he relishes, he stated again that it was not one he chose, but that after speaking to his mum (for whom this must have been a wrenching experience) and to his brother, he felt compelled to defend his father’s “good name”.
The second point Miliband stressed was that he wanted the next election “to be about how we raise living standards, not press standards”. He added, however, that in order for the 2015 contest to be “about the issues, not about smears”, it was necessary to address the question of press ethics now.
It is this that has led him to call for Mail proprietor Lord Rothermere to hold an investigation into the “culture and practices” of his newspapers on the grounds that what happened to him and his family (with his father smeared and his uncle’s memorial service gatecrashed) was not an “isolated incident”.
In a choice of words that recalled the phone-hacking scandal, he argued that the Mail could not blame “one rogue reporter, or one rogue features editor”. As he told LabourList, “what is it about the culture and practice of the organisation that makes these kind of things acceptable? Because the decisions made by an individual in an organisation are shaped by the culture and practice of an organisation.”
Many have rightly criticised the Mail on Sunday’s decision to suspend two journalists over the intrusion of the memorial service, rather than forcing Geordie Greig and Paul Dacre (who serves as editor-in-chief of the Mail on Sunday) to take responsibility.
Miliband has insisted throughout that this affair is “not about regulation, but about right and wrong”, but the two are not easily separated. Few doubt that the Mail on Sunday’s behaviour would breach the code of ethics included in the proposed system of press regulation.
Next week, ministers will decide whether to accept the press’s preferred model of self-regulation, or that supported by MPs. That debate aside, could the Mail have done more to damage its cause this week?
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