WHEN I was little and Mrs Thatcher was resident at Number 10, my mother – who was not the biggest fan of the Iron Lady – taught me to shout “poo!” every time her name was said on television.

Nearly three decades later I still wince a little every time someone invokes the name of the only woman to hold the office of Prime Minister, seemingly showing that a parent’s political opinions can have an influence later in life.

Clearly the Daily Mail took this as true when it branded Ed Miliband’s father Ralph ‘the man who hated Britain’.

Unfortunately, the crux of the Mail’s argument seems to be a passage in Ralph Miliband’s diary written when he was 17 in which he made some vague statement suggesting Britain losing World War Two might not be a completely bad thing.

How many of us can really say we didn’t make any ill-advised statements when we were 17?

If I had kept a diary in my teen years – which, thankfully, I didn’t – you could probably print the entire thing with the headline ‘the man who hated everything’.

Are Ralph Miliband’s opinions relevant to his son’s standing as leader of the Opposition?

Absolutely, especially since the Labour leader so often cites his father as one of his main influences.

But basing such a claim on one statement made before he was even old enough to vote?

That’s a stretch, even for a paper with something of a reputation for making its own version of events.

Maybe Ralph Miliband really did hate Britain, but there is only one man who can tell us for sure, and he’s been dead for 19 years.