Indy hack John Rentoul has today called Left Foot Forward "whining" Ed Miliband supporters in his latest hatchet job on the Labour leadership candidate.
Indy hack John Rentoul has today called Left Foot Forward “whining” Ed Miliband supporters in his latest hatchet job on the Labour leadership contender. This is not the first time Rentoul has accused Left Foot Forward of partiality in the race. At the very beginning of the campaign, on May 17, he wrote a blog asking whether we were “downplaying David Miliband” – and writing as fact that Will Straw “is a supporter of Ed Miliband”.
His evidence for this claim? That Will told the Evening Standard in January that “Ed Miliband, if he stands, could prove a popular leader”.
Rentoul, seeing his error, wrote: “I apologise to Will – I should have tried to contact him before posting.”
As regular readers of Left Foot Forward will know, on May 15 we made it clear that we would be “sitting on the fence” throughout the race.
This was not the first time that Rentoul had erroneously attributed a false position to Left Foot Forward. Shortly before, on May 13, Rentoul blogged:
“Will Straw, of Left Foot Forward, has just popped up on the BBC News Channel to tell us (after saying that his father was quite right not to contest the Labour leadership) that Labour had some truly marvellous results in England, but that there is a “doughnut” of seats round London where the party did not do so well.”
The word “marvellous” had not passed Will’s lips and Rentoul was again happy to issue a clarification including the line, “as Homer Simpson will tell you, a decent doughnut has a small hole and plenty of dough.”
D’oh!
12 Responses to “Why has John Rentoul got it in for Left Foot Forward?”
Claire Spencer
#popcorn RT @leftfootfwd: Why has @JohnRentoul got it in for Left Foot Forward? http://bit.ly/9DP5XO
Shamik Das
Why has @JohnRentoul got it in for @leftfootfwd? http://bit.ly/9DP5XO
Anna
Rentoul is absolutely passionate about Blair (very worrying) – so EdMili doesn’t quite fit the bill!
LC Prestes
Yet another Blairite extremist seeking to discredit Ed. “Back to the 1980s”, “naval gazing lefty liberals”. Is the new labour right finally morphing into the nasty party?
Liz McShane
Anna – agree with you 100%.
I follow Rentoul on twitter (thought it was a good idea at the time) and it’s quite unbelievable some of the things he comes out with (I appreciate that twitter is a different world to print/internet journalism etc) – but I think it really does undermine his journalistic credentials & objectivity.
It’s a pity he doesn’t have the integrity of his Indy colleague Steve Richards.