Is it just me who is fed up of the constant debate about who is the better Miliband, when the only options are David or Ed?

This sibling binary criminally neglects a true political titan of the Miliband family - their father, Ralph Miliband. AKA - "The man who hated Britain"

The Daily Mail's flagrantly antisemitic character assassination of Ralph Miliband was a formative political experience for me and a reminder of how low some were willing to stoop to preserve an economic and social order that suited their class.

I'd recommend Karin Stoeger & Ruth Wodak's article: ‘The man who hated Britain’ – the discursive construction of ‘national unity’ in the Daily Mail https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/17405904.2015.1103764

It seems certain that the use of such desperate tactics by the Daily Mail and their allies in the Capitalist State would have come as no surprise to Ralph, who had written many decades earlier on the hegemony exercised by the ruling class.

One in fact suspects that he would have been incredibly proud that they viewed his son's potential premiership as such an existential threat to their interests.

In his 1969 work, 'The State in Capitalist Society' he wrote:

"In an epoch when so much is made of democracy, equality, social mobility, classlessness and the rest, it has remained a basic fact of life in advanced capitalist countries that the vast majority of men and women...

in these countries has been governed, represented, administered, judged, and commanded in war by people drawn from other, economically superior and relatively distant classes."

The Guardian here provides a brief summary of some of Miliband's key ideas: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/shortcuts/2013/oct/02/ralph-miliband-six-key-ideas-daily-mail

For more extensive reading, I'd recommend this collection - 'Class War Conservatism And Other Essays' - which is available from Verso Books: https://www.versobooks.com/books/1788-class-war-conservatism

But not only was Ralph Miliband one of the finest left-wing thinkers of his generation, he also boasts an incredible life story.

Born in Belgium to working-class Polish Jewish immigrants, he grew up in the working-class community of Saint-Gilles, and aged 15, he became a member of Hashomer Hatzair, a socialist-Zionist youth group.

He fled to Britain in 1940 when Nazi Germany invaded Belgium.

Learning to speak English and enrolling at the London School of Economics, he became involved in left-wing politics.

He joined the Royal Navy in June 1943 and served for three years in the Belgian Section of the Royal Navy.

He served on several warships as a German speaking radio intelligence officer in the Mediterranean, tasked with intercepting German radio communications.

In June 1944 he took part in supporting the Normandy landings which he wrote was "the biggest operation in history" and he "would not miss it for anything".

After the war, Miliband resumed his studies at the LSE in 1946, and graduated with a first-class degree in 1947.

Miliband published his first book - 'Parliamentary Socialism' - in 1961, which examined the role that the Labour Party played in British politics and society from a Marxist position, finding it wanting for a lack of radicalism.

One wonders what critiques he may have made of his sons' later political work...though it is certain that any such criticisms would have coupled with a far stronger pride in their continuation of his life-long commitment to the Labour movement.

Ralph also later served as a Professor and Head of the Politics Department in my own great City of Leeds, though it is said that he did not enjoy his time at Leeds much, for which I am deeply sorry.

During his early years in Britain he visited the grave of Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery in north London, to swear an oath to "the workers' cause".

After his death in 1994, aged 70, he was also buried at Highgate Cemetery, close to Karl Marx.

So here's to Ralph Miliband, a titan of the British left who must be remembered by all of us.

Rest in Power Comrade