http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GMTxycAXY

YouTube: BBC Newsnight

BBC’S FLAGSHIP CURRENT affairs programme, Newsnight, was pretty lively last night as the former Downing Street spin doctor Alastair Campbell engaged in a furious debate with the deputy editor of the British Daily Mail.

The row centred on an article published by the Daily Mail last weekend in which it said the father of Labour Party leader Ed Miliband “hated Britain” based on his writings as a Marxist academic.

The late Ralph Miliband was the subject of an article in which Mail journalist Geoffrey Levy questioned whether the late Miliband’s beliefs influenced his son but in a right of reply published yesterday Miliband said his father loved Britain.

However an editorial for the paper accompanying the article stood by its original story, saying Ralph Miliband had an “evil legacy”.

On Newsnight, Mail deputy editor Jon Steafel said that Ralph Miliband, who died nearly 20 years ago, “in our view represented someone who hated British values.”.

He said: “We felt and, we think, we produced evidence to support it… that he hated British values and that his views on many areas were antipathetic to British values.”

Campbell responded furiously saying  that it was a “pathetic ramble” from Steafel in which he was “reading out the lines of his editor Paul Dacre”.

“What you’ve got to understand about the Daily Mail is that it’s the worst of British values posing as the best,” he said.

The full debate is well worth a watch above.

Watch: This former British prime minister doesn’t want to answer any questions

Video: British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband has been egged again

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