REJECTED by the British electorate as the author of Labour’s losing General Election manifesto, Ed Miliband has been emphatically rejected by Labour parliamentarians, both domestic and European.

He has been further rejected by Labour Party members yet the trade unions want him, therefore he wins the Labour leadership contest. Before we get carried away on a current of warm sentimentality we should consider why the unions want him. He has shared their support of Marxism. In his acceptance speech he said he wanted “to help the squeezed middle class”.

The manifesto he penned advocated more state intervention, and higher taxes including the grossly unfair graduate tax. How would those help anyone?

He exhorts the death of New Labour. He advocates a return to socialism. Where will that get us? Just as the International Monetary Fund shows public support for the coalition Government’s efforts to reduce the deficit, the spectre of a union-controlled Labour leader hovering over the recovery bodes ill. When the debt owed to the unions is called in, we shall see how much of his own man Mr Miliband will be.

Colin T Mortimer, Pity Me, Durham.