There's not much overly leftwing about the new Labour leader, despite Tory press claims

Labour party leader Ed Miliband (left) greets his elder brother David onstage during the Labour party conference Photograph: David Moir/REUTERS

Gosh! How well informed the rightwing press is about the new Miliband regime. "New Labour is Dead," shouts today's Telegraph. Across at the Daily Mail the mood is scarcely less adamant. "Last Rites for New Labour."

There's a lot of detail to back up this verdict. Ed Miliband's generally tentative remarks have been firmed up along with claims that the unions virtually stole the election. No, they didn't. They clinched his victory under the rules. Accepting a result you don't like is part of the democratic process.

I'm struck reading today's papers by the treatment afforded to allegations that David Beckham had an affair with a woman the Sun dubs a "lying hooker". Beckham strongly denies the claim and is suing for damages. It does not prevent the paper spreading her latest claims across page one, pushing its "Ed's Reddy for Action" (Geddit?) spread to the inside pages.

For whatever reason, the tabloids are all agreed that her claims against the former England captain, reported in the German-owned, US-published magazine, In Touch, are false. It does not stop them recycling them in immense detail even as they dub her a "desperate brazen liar" (Sun) promoting "a tissue of lies" (Daily Mail).

No surprise there, then. Remember what some of them did to Madeleine McCann's family before having to pay up. But do bear it in mind when the same papers trot out any old rubbish about Miliband and treat the dafter pronouncements of trade union leaders as if they were already Labour policy.

As I noted yesterday, Miliband keeps protesting that "there's nothing very leftwing" about attacking investment bankers' bonuses or the terms of the coalition's timetable for deficit cuts – on which the coalition is likely to have to retreat, I suspect.

Opposing free schools? Many sensible people opposed them and Michael Gove's claim that he would release huge pent-up demand has (so far) proved illusory. A graduate tax? Ditto, though I happen to think he's got it wrong (so far).

Defence of universal benefits from bus passes to child benefit? Ditto again. A higher minimum wage and a high pay commission to address rising levels of inequality? Sounds good to me. More unequal societies tend to be unhappier ones.

Behind all this lies what Polly Toynbee rightly calls the imaginary "middle class" routinely presented by the Mail, Telegraph and Express as earning much more than it does. Articles repeatedly suggest incomes and lifestyles far above what folk actually earn.

In real life, the median income is around £25,000, the median household income £36,000. In the mid-market Tory papers readers can often be forgiven for thinking it is at least double those figures.

It matters because it leads to an over-emphasis on, for instance, the 40% rate of income tax – which most people don't pay. As Robin Cook once reminded his Today programme tormentor – John Humphreys, I suspect – that "more of your listeners are interested in the rate of benefits than in the top tax rate".

There are all sorts of issues to be teased out about the wisdom of the 50% rate – Ed Mil wants to keep it while Alistair Darling sees it as temporary – and how hard governments should wisely press the very rich and their accountants. All those other issues, too.

But the coalition's renewed assault on the benefits of the real middle class are much more direct and much more pressing – 20 October is less than a month away – than whatever it is Ed Miliband eventually decides to offer in the 2015 election manifesto.

By then, much will have changed, including Ed Miliband. At university, by the way, he used to be Ted. Red Ted? That sounds cuddlier already.