Do calm down dear! How Press -hating Red Ed blew a gasket
GESTICULATING wildly, his eyes popping with intensity, Ed Miliband did his utmost in a rare Commons speech to persuade MPs to reopen the Leveson inquiry.
But the former Labour leader was left humiliated last night after his latest bid to curb the free Press was voted down.
Flapping his hands from side to side as his voice cracked with emotion, he said it was ‘a matter of honour’ to plough ahead with another investigation into the Press – despite widespread reforms in the six years since the £50million Leveson inquiry concluded.
Yesterday’s intervention was a rare sighting of Mr Miliband in the Commons chamber in only his fourth speech this year. Two of the others were also about the media. Mr Miliband, who blocked military action in Syria in 2013 in retaliation for the regime’s use of chemical weapons, was a notable absentee from the recent debate on Bashar al-Assad’s latest use of chlorine gas on children.
Mr Miliband was also criticised for broadcasting unfounded allegations on Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday, in which he claimed journalists had posed as medical staff after the Manchester terror attacks last May, which killed 22.
Referencing a report that investigated the emergency services’ handling of the attack, as well as how the media had reported the atrocity, the MP for Doncaster North said: ‘I recommend that people read the report into the experiences of the Manchester bombing victims and their relatives, produced earlier this year by Bob Kerslake. I’m afraid that the account that gave...we had journalists posing as medical staff we had bereaved relatives, who didn’t know that their relatives had died, being told, being given condolences by the Press. I’m afraid for the minority, and it is a minority that’s bringing down the good name of the Press, that minority haven’t changed.’
However the Kerslake report found no concrete evidence that journalists had pretended to be medical staff.
Instead, it read: ‘There were at least two examples of impersonation. One respondent talked on the phone to someone saying they were a Bereavement Nurse; whilst another described talking to someone who they felt sounded to be more like a journalist but who purported to be from the police.’
Neither of the claims were proven. Of his findings, Lord Kerslake said: ‘To have experienced such intrusive and overbearing behaviour at a time of such enormous vulnerability seemed to us to be completely and utterly unacceptable.’ But he added: ‘We recognise that this was some, but by no means all the
media and that the media also have a positive and important role to play.’
Mr Miliband was blasted by Bob Seely, Tory MP for the Isle of Wight, who accused him of repeating ‘absolute hearsay’ as well as an attempt to ‘muzzle investigative journalism’.
He told The Daily Telegraph: ‘The free Press isn’t perfect... but you don’t make the situation better by doing something that is incredibly foolish and counter-productive. It’s a golden era for investigative journalism, which is absolutely good for our society. These are embittered celebrities and politicians who want to get their own back. These are exactly the people for whom we need a free Press.’
And Tory MP Nick Boles tweeted: ‘Striking and depressing that the political initiative to which Ed Miliband has devoted most energy since stepping down as leader of the Labour Party is the muzzling of Britain’s free press #wrongthenwrongnow.’
After ministers voted not to implement the second stage of Leveson, Mr Miliband tweeted: ‘Very disappointed for the victims of phone-hacking and press abuse that we did not win the vote for Leveson 2. The battle goes on to keep our promise to them to get the truth they deserve and protection for victims in the future.’
In 2011, Mr Miliband, who quit as Labour leader after losing the 2015 election, was seen cosying up to Rupert Murdoch, chief of newspaper publisher News UK, at a party.