It certainly wasn’t your April fool to suggest that much of Britain’s media displays “aggressive anti-Labour partisanship” and is “monstering Ed Miliband on behalf of the Conservative party” (Editorial, 1 April). However, it goes deeper than the media barons seeking to protect their vested private interests. Miliband’s willingness to champion a publicly owned NHS, seek to address inequality and stand up to the bloodsucker corporations are each anathema to the barons. And his state comprehensive education and capacity for compassion and empathy stand him apart from the prevailing “populism and not looking in depth at what the issues are” decried by Joan Walley (End of an era, G2, 30 March). Hopefully, enough voters will see through the media onslaught and recognise that, in fact, Miliband’s character and his belief in more fairness and social responsibility reflect precisely the areas in which the UK is currently in serious defecit.
Richard Stainton
Whitstable, Kent
• Your editorial made me smile ruefully. I am trying to picture the difference between the “rightwing version of the election narrative” that you identify in “several parts of the media” and your own columnists’ and editorials’ many contributions over this parliament to the notion that Ed Miliband should be “dismissed as hopeless”. The Guardian has played a full part in the drip-drip undermining that will have disheartened Labour members and supporters alike, and encouraged the outbreaks of discussion about Miliband’s removal (eg Few think Labour can win, Neal Lawson, 23 September 2013; It feels as if the Tories will win the next election, possibly outright, John Harris, 3 April 2014). The same day Rafael Behr questions the reliability of opinion polls, something many of us have done for years. Too little too late, I fear. It may well be that “low-information voters” will determine the result of the election. Generally, I suspect, Guardian readers are high-information voters, some of whom may well have been persuaded by your efforts that voting Labour is a hopeless cause.
W Stephen Gilbert
Corsham, Wiltshire
