David Cameron “wants the best for this country”, Ed Miliband said as he explained his desire for a more civilised political debate in the wake of the row over a newspaper’s attack on his father.
But he said that the prime minister’s policies were “profoundly misguided” and his actions showed he favoured the interests of the rich.
“I would never say about David Cameron that he hates Britain,” the Labour leader said in a direct reference to a Daily Mail headline that sparked the dispute.
“I would never say about David Cameron that he doesn’t want the best for this country. Of course he wants the best for this country, so what the Mail said about my dad I would never say about David Cameron.
“What I would say is that I think his policies are profoundly misguided and I don’t think it’s true that he’s leaving nobody behind.”
But pressed on whether he could say the Tory leader was “a good man”, he said: “By his deeds he stands up for the privileged few in this country. You have to judge people by their deeds and not their words.”
The Daily Mail printed an article about Mr Miliband’s late father Ralph a noted Marxist academic under the headline “The man who hated Britain”.
Mr Miliband has claimed this attack, and the subsequent gatecrashing of a private memorial service for his uncle by the Mail on Sunday, are symptomatic of the culture at the titles.