Nick Clegg says Daily Mail 'vilifies modern Britain'
Ed Miliband writes to Mail owner after uninvited reporter attends memorial event
(34 minutes later)
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has said that "if anyone excels in... vilifying a lot about modern Britain, it's the Daily Mail", as he backed Labour leader Ed Miliband in his row with the newspaper.
Ed Miliband has written to the owner of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, Lord Rothermere, asking him to "reflect on the culture of your newspapers".
Mr Clegg told LBC the Daily Mail's claim the Labour leader's father "hated Britain" was "out of order".
In his letter the Labour leader claimed a Mail on Sunday reporter attended uninvited a memorial event for his uncle in Guy's Hospital on Wednesday.
He said he was not a regular reader of the Mail, but "when I do, it seems to be overflowing with bile about modern Britain - talk about kettles and pots".
Mr Miliband says relatives told him they had been approached for views on "the Daily Mail's description of my father as someone who "hated Britain".
The Daily Mail stands by its reporting.
The Daily Mail stands by its reporting.
And in Thursday's edition, columnist Stephen Glover accuses Mr Miliband of staging a "show of calculated hysteria" for political reasons.
In his letter Mr Miliband said the memorial event for Professor Harry Keen was attended by family, close friends and colleagues.
"On one level, Red Ed knew that, as he has bound himself to his father in a series of speeches, he could not afford to let the accusation that Miliband senior had hated Britain go unchallenged," he wrote.
"I was told by one of my relatives late yesterday evening that a reporter from the Mail on Sunday had found her way into the event uninvited. I also discovered that, once there, she approached members of my family seeking comments on the controversy over the Daily Mail's description of my late father as someone who 'hated Britain'.
"On another level, Ed Miliband realised that his diatribes against this paper would go down well with the party faithful, and possibly convince the wider electorate that he was stronger and more determined than they had thought.
"My wider family, who are not in public life, feel understandably appalled and shocked that this can have happened.
"He may also hope that, by creating such an almighty hullabaloo about his supposedly traduced father 19 months before the general election, he will somehow neutralise a potentially embarrassing issue - the influence of his Marxist father on his own beliefs - and deter the press from returning to it in the near future."
"The Editor of the Mail on Sunday has since confirmed to my office that a journalist from his newspaper did indeed attend the memorial uninvited with the intention of seeking information for publication this weekend.
'Raucous'
"Sending a reporter to my late uncle's memorial crosses a line of common decency. I believe it a symptom of the culture and practices of both the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday.
Asked about the row, prompted by a profile of Marxist academic Ralph Miliband in Saturday's newspaper headlined "The man who hated Britain", Mr Clegg said it was "understandable" that Ed Miliband had reacted with such anger.
"There are many decent people working at those newspapers and I know that many of them will be disgusted by this latest episode. But they will also recognise that what has happened to my family has happened to many others."
In his weekly phone-in on the London radio station, he added of the Daily Mail: "They don't like working mothers, they don't like the BBC, they don't like members of the royal family, they don't like teachers, they don't like the English football team - the list goes on.
"The Daily Mail is free to print what it likes, people like me are perfectly free to say that it's wrong."
Mr Clegg is the latest in a series of politicians to have backed Mr Miliband's anger at the way his father - a Jewish refugee to Britain who served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War - was described as hating Britain.
On Wednesday Lord Heseltine said the Mail article that caused the row was "demeaning", but Education Secretary Michael Gove said a free press was "raucous" and would hold politicians to account and "by definition, will sometimes offend".
Ed Miliband has said he does not share his father's ideology, but the Daily Mail has maintained it was fair to scrutinise the beliefs of his father as the Labour leader has talked of him being an influence.
In a right of reply in Tuesday's Daily Mail, Mr Miliband said his father "loved" Britain.
On the same pages the paper then repeated its original article and wrote an editorial saying his father had had an "evil legacy".
