Labour’s jibes can’t hide the truth about Ed

IF ANYONE had doubted the force of Martin Winter’s revelations about Ed Miliband in last week’s Mail on Sunday, the panicked response of Labour’s spin machine would have confirmed their importance.

Chief among those attacking Mr Winter and his account of an inept Mr Miliband was Alastair Campbell, the discredited mouthpiece of Tony Blair. He is best known for his ‘sexed up’ dossiers on Saddam Hussein’s phantom weapons of mass destruction.

All he succeeded in doing was to confirm that Labour was deeply wounded by this worrying glimpse of the man who may well be Prime Minister a few weeks from now.

The Winter family saw – and heard – Mr Miliband at close quarters as few others have done. Among the ‘everyday people’ that he claims to speak for, the future Leader of the Opposition showed himself as unlucky, awkward and inept.

To call them ‘nonentities’ now is to reveal the gulf that lies between metropolitan intellectuals and those who have always made up the backbone of the Labour movement.

The party’s high command know perfectly well that their leader is a grave liability, and would get rid of him if they could.

But as they cannot, they are left with no weapon and no answer. So they make crude attacks on those, such as Mr Winter and The Mail on Sunday, who point out the uncomfortable truth.