Labour leader Miliband furious at paper which said father 'hated Britain'

The leader of Britain's main opposition party, Ed Miliband, was locked in a bitter war of words with a tabloid newspaper yesterday after it branded his late father "the man who hated Britain".

The Labour Party leader hit back at an article in the right-leaning Daily Mail about his Marxist theorist father Ralph. The tabloid claimed its revelations would "disturb everyone who loves this country".

The newspaper agreed to publish Miliband's response to an article on Saturday which claimed the Labour leader was intent on bringing back socialism in homage to his father.

The controversial newspaper article opens with a description of Ralph Miliband standing in front of communist economist Karl Marx's grave at London's Highgate Cemetery and swearing lifelong fidelity to the workers' cause; it concludes by describing how the senior Miliband is now buried "just a dozen yards" from Marx.

"Meanwhile, his son Red Ed … talks of socialism being a key word for the next Labour government. Perhaps the ground is indeed now being prepared."

The Mail's article cited a diary entry written by the 17-year-old Ralph Miliband during the second world war in which he said: "The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world ... you sometimes want them almost to lose [the war] to show them how things are."