LONDON – A war of words between British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband and the conservative Daily Mail tabloid has moved beyond politics into more personal territory with a blistering attack on Miliband’s late father.

In a blaring headline over the weekend, the newspaper labeled Ralph Miliband “The man who hated Britain” and warned that everyone who loves the country should be disturbed by his beliefs since they are having such an influence on his son.

It accuses Miliband of embracing socialism as a way to pay tribute to the philosophy of his father, a prominent left-wing academic.

The Mail’s article cited a diary entry written by the 17-year-old Ralph Miliband during World War II in which he said: “The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world . . . you sometimes want them almost to lose (the war) to show them how things are.”

Miliband on Tuesday responded by writing a column in the newspaper asserting that his father had loved Britain and fought for it on the shores of Normandy on D-Day during the war. He said The Daily Mail had been grossly unfair to his father, who died in 1994.

“Fierce debate about politics does not justify character assassination of my father,” Miliband wrote, “questioning the patriotism of a man who risked his life for our country in the Second World War or publishing a picture of his gravestone with a tasteless pun about him being a ‘grave socialist.’

“Britain was a source of hope and comfort for him, not hatred.”

He described how his Jewish father arrived in Britain as a 16-year-old fleeing the Nazi assault on Belgium: “Like most refugees, the security of our country was really important to him. And like some refugees, he owed his life to it. So my Dad loved Britain, he served Britain, and he taught both David (his brother, former Foreign Secretary David Miliband) and me to do the same.”

He said politicians should no longer stay silent for fear that speaking out would make things worse.

Miliband, 43, said newspapers should hold politicians to account but that the piece published Saturday was “of a different order,” saying there was nothing that could “remotely justify the lurid headline.”

He said it was “absurd” to draw such damning conclusions from a teenager’s diary, writing, “I know they say ‘you can’t libel the dead’ but you can smear them.”

However, The Daily Mail was unrepentant Tuesday, reprinting Saturday’s article beneath Miliband’s response with the headline: “We repeat: This man DID hate Britain.”

It said that while Ralph Miliband might have felt gratitude for the “security, freedom and comfort” he enjoyed in Britain, it was “blindingly clear” that the “lifelong, unreconstructed Marxist” had “nothing but hatred” for its “values, traditions and institutions.”

And if Miliband gets his way on state-backed press regulation, the Labour leader “will have driven a hammer and sickle through the heart of the nation,” it added.

Prime Minister David Cameron offered support to his political rival. “If anyone had a go at my father, I would want to respond very vigorously,” the Conservative leader said.