The next election is being fought now. For Britain to be aligned even further as a destroyer of the welfare state and public spending, it's been necessary to depict Miliband as a communist, a cynical sell-out to 'the Scots', and now - even more importantly - someone whose electoral failure was dire.
We know he wasn't a communist and was no more or less cynical than anyone else sitting in the House of Commons when it comes to horse-trading. The electoral bit, though, needs unpicking. The core point is that 9.3 million people in England and Wales voted for a party led by someone who only the Mirror and Guardian (reluctantly) backed. In its own tiny way, this represents small acts of resistance and solidarity.
For the time being, the media are not spending much time finding out why people did vote Labour. As I said in another post, the media set the 'ring' within which the contests and battles take place. The ring now set is about how and why Labour failed. This means at heart a story about how Labour is not listening to UKIP voters and not why people chose to vote Labour and how the thoughts of those people can be built on. Much more exciting to the media is finding UKIPpers and recycling uncritically what they say. In other words, acting as a mouthpiece for their thoughts and using these as a hammer to hit the 9 million Labour voters.
Part of this project (which media people will deny is a project - also part of creating the 'ring') is to install a Tory-lite leadership in the Labour Party.
