Who really benefits from the spat between Miliband and the Mail?

In the last week the Daily Mail's appalling ad hominem attacks upon Mr Ed Miliband and the reputation of his father Ralph Miliband caused something of a storm. It has now come to light that the Daily Mail had also sent a reporter to gatecrash the funeral service of a member of Mr Miliband's family for reaction interviews to the controversy.

In response, Mr Miliband has written a letter of complaint to the proprietor of the Daily Mail, Lord Rothermere, demanding action be taken over the newspaper's practices. Despite an apology from the Editor of the Mail on Sunday, the Daily Mail thus far appears to have no intention of changing tack - today making an odd, and you would think unhelpful, comparison between the response of 'the left' to Mrs Margaret Thatcher's death and it's own attacks on Ralph Miliband (Glover, 2013).

The question that has to asked is who will ultimately benefit from this confrontation?

Well it certainly won't benefit the Daily Mail, although it will also be unlikely to hurt them. Without the serious threat of punitive legal action or a stern regulator, they have little motivation to change their business model. And the views of those already reading the Daily Mail and voting Conservative are unlikely to be changed by a debate that is taking place far from the Daily Mail's pages.

The same goes for those reading other newspapers and voting otherwise. The real effects of this incident will be upon floating, undecided, voters. The real winner on that front - not likely planned on the Daily Mail's part - will be Mr Ed Miliband himself and the Labour Party. The Daily Mail's image is so tied in the minds of many to the nastier side of Toryism, that this whole mess will only drive floating voters away from the Conservatives and reinforce Labour's position at the polls.

Hopefully such an outcome will prove to be a stern warning as to the dangers of bringing ad hominem type tactics to the political arena. Not only is there a dangerous chance that, speaking to a purely practical level, these tactics will backfire, but they also muddy the pool and lower the standard of debate.

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+ Stephen Glover's 'How typically hypocritical of the Left, who danced on the grave of Mrs Thatcher, to be upset about debate over Red Ed's Marxist father'; in The Daily Mail; 3 October 2013.