Why has John Rentoul got it in for Left Foot Forward?

Indy hack John Rentoul has today called Left Foot Forward “whining” Ed Miliband supporters in his latest hatchet job on the Labour leadership contender. This is not the first time Rentoul has accused Left Foot Forward of partiality in the race. At the very beginning of the campaign, on May 17, he wrote a blog asking whether we were “downplaying David Miliband” – and writing as fact that Will Straw “is a supporter of Ed Miliband”.

John-Rentoul His evidence for this claim? That Will told the Evening Standard in January that “Ed Miliband, if he stands, could prove a popular leader”.

Rentoul, seeing his error, wrote: “I apologise to Will – I should have tried to contact him before posting.”

As regular readers of Left Foot Forward will know, on May 15 we made it clear that we would be “sitting on the fence” throughout the race.

This was not the first time that Rentoul had erroneously attributed a false position to Left Foot Forward. Shortly before, on May 13, Rentoul blogged:

“Will Straw, of Left Foot Forward, has just popped up on the BBC News Channel to tell us (after saying that his father was quite right not to contest the Labour leadership) that Labour had some truly marvellous results in England, but that there is a “doughnut” of seats round London where the party did not do so well.”

The word “marvellous” had not passed Will’s lips and Rentoul was again happy to issue a clarification including the line, “as Homer Simpson will tell you, a decent doughnut has a small hole and plenty of dough.”

D’oh!

http://twitter.com/thedancingflea/status/22187958288 Claire Spencer

#popcorn RT @leftfootfwd: Why has @JohnRentoul got it in for Left Foot Forward? http://bit.ly/9DP5XO
http://twitter.com/shamikdas/status/22188229178 Shamik Das

Why has @JohnRentoul got it in for @leftfootfwd? http://bit.ly/9DP5XO
Anna

Rentoul is absolutely passionate about Blair (very worrying) – so EdMili doesn’t quite fit the bill!
LC Prestes

Yet another Blairite extremist seeking to discredit Ed. “Back to the 1980s”, “naval gazing lefty liberals”. Is the new labour right finally morphing into the nasty party?
Liz McShane

Anna – agree with you 100%.

I follow Rentoul on twitter (thought it was a good idea at the time) and it’s quite unbelievable some of the things he comes out with (I appreciate that twitter is a different world to print/internet journalism etc) – but I think it really does undermine his journalistic credentials & objectivity.

It’s a pity he doesn’t have the integrity of his Indy colleague Steve Richards.
http://oxfordkevin.carbonclimate.org Oxford Kevin

Rentoul can’t help himself. As an apologist for Blair, New Labor and the Iraq war he can’t see the world any other way than the new labor way. Pay him no attention.
Liz McShane

For someone who would probably class himself as a social democrat he has a very stalinist approach/ view of things.
JohnB

I think Rentoul will switch to supporting the Con/Lib coalition if EM wins. He’s lost in nostalgia for the New Labour heyday and yearning for TB, the king over the water. Also I hate his smug, supercilious expression.
Edward Carlsson Browne

Does it matter? I think that one could go in to Questions to which the answer is no.

He might be influential amongst apparatchiks and lobby journalists, but he’s not even a big presence in the dead-tree version of the Indie, and I highly doubt many of the right-leaning authoritarian Labour supporters he speaks for (insofar as he speaks for Labour at all) read the Indie.
Andy Ray

Probably Blairite Rentoul’s blind/biased Freudian slips and genuine support for D Miliband is merely a symptom of a more fundamental syndrome New Labour is still affected with : despite seemingly talking about forgetting the past (tribal divisions), uniting all strands of the party, or even a “Movement for Change” (sic), the rightwing establishment of the party is systematically mindful of closing its old tribal ranks solidly behind DM in terms of both material and PR support (which, as expected, are disproportionately bigger than the rest of the contestants’). Plus ca change …..
Son of Guido

Have you seen Dizzy’s recent post?

http://dizzythinks.net/2010/08/dear-sunny-hundal-and-will-straw.html

Face it Shamik, LFF purports to be eveidence based blogging and yet it is nothing of the sort. Mostly spin that is easily seen through. Hence it will be a target.
http://twitter.com/tamsinchan/status/22617300989 Tam Chandler

RT @leftfootfwd: Why has John Rentoul got it in for Left Foot Forward? http://bit.ly/9DP5XO