Actress, comedian and lifelong Labour voter Maureen Lipman has written a blistering article for this week’s Standpoint magazine, eviscerating Ed Miliband and declaring: “come election day, I shall give my vote to another party. Almost any other party. Until my party is once more led by mensches”. Lipman explains:

“For the first time in five decades, I shall not be voting Labour. I have always been a socialist and I believe in the principles of socialism. I have stood on the hustings beside Neil Kinnock and canvassed for my Aunt Rita in her constituency in Hull… I still believe that, until the Iraq debacle, Tony Blair did great work to restore the party’s fortunes. I still thumb through Tony Benn’s diaries with a fond smile and I am Alan Johnson’s number one fan as a politician, a writer and a humane human being. I have all the time in the world for Margaret Beckett and still admire Frank Field. I rather liked David Miliband and have a sneaking suspicion he may return strengthened by his time out in the real world. But this lot? The Chuka Harman Burnham Hunt Balls brigade? I can’t, in all seriousness, go into a booth and put my mark on any one of them.”

Lipman goes on to chastise Miliband for knifing his brother: “Ed Miliband’s leadership coup was as biblical as anything in the book of Genesis, although the unions probably had less sway in those days”, piling into him for his bacon sandwich hypocrisy and his stance on Palestine, concluding: “I’m an actress, Ed, and I am often commended for my timing. Frankly, my dear, yours sucks”. The very quotable piece is worth reading in full here. Brutal…