Mail Rennard Hypocrisy

The obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre is at its most righteous and indignant today as it pours as much scorn and hostility as can be mustered on Corporal Clegg and the Lib Dems, following the latest episode in the long-running saga of Chris Rennard and his allegedly inappropriate behaviour towards a number of women in the party.

Who're you f***ing calling a hypocrite, c***?!?

“Sex Pest Storm: Clegg In Crisis” thunders the front page headline, with the addition of “‘Groping peer’ suspended because he won’t apologise ... He vows to sue Lib Dems ... Clegg’s accused of losing grip”. As Sir Sean nearly said, I think we got the point. And just to rub it in, readers are reminded that Clegg was “dubbed Calamity Clegg during a bitter leadership contest against Chris Huhne”.

So let’s look at the issue, which another “Daily Mail reporter” has helpfully outlined. “Four women are known to have made complaints about Lord Rennard’s behaviour. All of them have described inappropriate touching and advances”. Daily Mail Comment is most unhappy: “Almost six years have passed since Nick Clegg’s aides became aware of women’s complaints that they had been sexually harassed by their former chief executive”.

And the latter is the authentic voice of the Vagina Monologue himself. So sexism and inappropriate touching is clearly A Very Bad Thing, even to the Daily Mail. However, and here there is a significant however, that puts the paper in what Spike Milligan might have called A Very Difficult Position.

After all, sexism also includes demeaning women, like, oh I dunno, referring to them as “birds”, as in a recent Mail column which told “the dopey bird behind the wheel was taking her test. The consensus of opinion was that she failed”. Or a piece on a sexism complaint in the security services: “But if this dopey bird couldn’t cope with unwanted sexual advances from her boss, how on earth would she react if she was ever captured and tortured by the Taliban”?

Who on earth got away with all of that? Well, the same Mail pundit who observed “It's a pity that Dave [Cameron] wasn't sitting close enough to pat [Angela] Eagle on the forearm. That always works, too. I did it once to soppy Liberal MP Sarah Teather on a television panel and I thought she was going to implode”.

No prizes for recognising the routinely lamentable prose of the Mail’s unfunny and talentless churnalist Richard Littlejohn, for whom inappropriate and unwanted touching of Lib Dem MPs is fine. And Paul Dacre must agree, otherwise he would not be bunging The Sage Of Vero Beach the thick end of a million notes a year to regale readers with his pisspoor rantings. So that’s another slice of rank hypocrisy.

Do as Dacre says, not as his pundits do. No change there, then.