When Miliband started his ministerial blog he got a lot of criticism that it was party politics at the taxpayers expense, he promised that “because this is a Government site I won’t lapse into party ranting”. It would be a breach of the Civil Service Code if he did.

So why today is he defending the Labour party against allegations of a history of animosity to the countryside and invoking Bevin in defence of his party on the taxpayer funded blog? That is a clear breach of the non-partisan rules and his own promises.