The proverbial hit the fan in Ed Miliband versus the Daily Mail. Here's the chronology.
The Man Who Hated Britain, etc. Ed Miliband: My Daddy Loved Britain, etc. And this little piece by some deranged British government stooge and hack posing as a historian, getting all his facts confused and wrong and that's not counting willful lies and deceits - a true British whore of the writing profession:
Stalin "Gulags", etc. Personally I am taking no sides in this idiotic and childish quarrel - "who loved Britain more" as if loving Britain - the evil curse on humankind responsible for the most genocides and crimes against humanity - is something to be proud of.
If Ed Miliband's father really did hate Britain -- well done to him! and Ed Miliband should accept it and proudly say, "Yes, my father did hate Britain, this ugly murderous excuse for a country of ours - he had his reasons and so do I". But, alas, he is not man enough to do it. Although I do feel that deep down he simply cannot not hate it, so there's the possibility of redemption yet for him.
Regarding their other shouting match concerning who distanced himself from Stalin further, again the protagonists are totally misinformed. Stalin is the Left. There is no other Left but that of Stalin. And the Left owes everything to Stalin.
Who are the British to throw stones? Let's remind ourselves once again. As one commenter noted, "Where to start" even? There is no start and no finish in sight. Britain - child labor in coal mines, Satanic mills churning out products and running workers to death, British high castes prancing all over the world with the general British population living in appalling conditions expected to suffer from rickets, TB and syphilis at an appalling rate, most dead by age 39; inducing famine in Ireland, China and Kashmir to grab land or destroy cotton competitors, opium trafficking into China, the most barbaric slavery trafficking in Africa, Americas and the Caribbean, genocide of the Amerindian and Australian Aboriginal races and replacing them with their evil spawn -- Aussies and Yanks, dispossession of half the world by imperialist aggression. Millions of deaths caused by permanent British aggression, the death toll of the British empire in the hundreds of millions and that's even before the war dead are taken in. Britain invading the most countries in the world and killing representatives of the world's most nationalities -- from Americans to Zimbabweans. Horrendous crimes against Muslims and the Islamic faith by the British. That's your lovable Britain for you. Love it all you want, I won't.
And now to Stalin. The 30 million figure of Stalin's victims is bandied about but is nothing by a big lie. According even to the most rabid pro-Western human rights organization in Russia, Memorial, the count of victims of Stalin's repressions stands at 900,000. But even these purges and repressions were brought about mainly by the evil capitalist Imperialist powers with Britain at the very apex. They never ceased their sabotage, their spying, covert actions, terrorist acts, threat of aggression, fermenting internal unrest in the hope of destroying the world's first Workers and Peasants' State. They are still continuing to throw excrement at it decades later. It shows you how badly they were affected by the Soviet Union's very existence, by Stalin himself.
To survive, Western ruling and thieving unelected plutocratic elites, backed by the Imperialist capitalists, had to make major concessions to their populations, they had to introduce (limited) workers' rights, pensions and paid holidays, welfare, (sham) democracy, home ownership for ordinary people not just the rich -- all to counter Stalin's appeal to the working masses. None of it existed before the Russian revolution and Stalin, and it was the Russian revolution and Stalin in particular that made it happen. Everything Britain and the West in general have in the way of people's rights, work conditions, pensions, benefits, etc. is owed to Stalin. VIVA STALIN!
By the way, these rights are being eroded now and taken away again by the Western governments, capitalists and bankers precisely because there is no more Soviet Union and no more Stalin.