Othering Ed: Newspaper coverage of Miliband and the election

Ivor Gaber demonstrates how the Labour leader’s treatment by several Conservative supporting newspapers was redolent of how the print media represented his predecessors during the 1980s. During the 2015 campaign Ed Miliband was subjected to a torrent of criticism that centred on what his newspaper detractors saw as his character flaws, personal weaknesses and poor judgement. The chapter contextualizes these attacks by explaining how print media attacks on ‘Red Ed’ began with his leadership victory in the aftermath of his party’s 2010 defeat. The key lines of attack which had a resonance in the 2015 election are rehearsed, notably the references to Miliband’s self-confessed neo-Marxist father and related tropes about the son’s alleged weirdness combined with his supposedly unworldly intellectualism.