Miliband’s la-la lurch to the left has revived the right

Every opposition leader sometimes needs to act as a saboteur. Ed Miliband showed his wrecking skills this week, picking a fight with the Daily Mail about an article it had published saying that his Marxist father ‘hated Britain’. The row overshadowed the Conservative party conference and sparked a debate which informed those who did not previously know (or care) that Ralph Miliband was an asylum seeker who arrived in Britain as a teenager and repaid his adopted country by fighting Nazis while serving in the Royal Navy. Miliband’s absurd overreaction upstaged what little the Tories had to say that day.

Of the four main political parties, Labour had the most successful conference. Ukip’s meeting was a fiasco, confirming suspicions that it is a lawless protest movement rather than a political party. The Liberal Democrats had a quiet meeting, as you’d expect when a party representing southwest England decides to convene in Glasgow.