Paul Dacre Starstruck On Spite

“I know of nothing anywhere in the rest of the world’s media which matches the unmitigated spite of an attack by the Daily Mail. And since it is part of an industry in Britain whose sole attempt at regulation is an organisation which rejects more than 90% of complaints without even considering their content, that aggression is free to cripple reputations, free to kill ideas, regardless of justice, regardless of truth”.

Pointless story - except for kicking its targets

So wrote Nick Davies in his seminal book on the workings of the press, Flat Earth News. And today’s Daily Mail has shown us a prime example of what he meant by “unmitigated spite”, as a front page hatchet job headline thundered “Starstruck: As Iraq implodes and Russian tanks roll into Ukraine, PM goes on date night at celeb hotspot and Hague hobnobs with Brangelina”.

That this was a hatchet job on the Government, and more specifically Young Dave and William ‘Ague, can be easily deduced by inspecting the name on the by-line: yes, it’s Dacre’s cattiest and nastiest Glenda, Jan Moir. The copy is certainly down to her usual standard: for starters, the PM’s evening out was not last night, but Wednesday. And the Ukraine claim is bunk.

Look who's behind the hatchet job. AGAIN

“You might have expected him to have other things on his plate. With Iraq in turmoil and Russian tanks rolling into Ukraine, the Prime Minister still managed to find time this week to hobnob with A-listers. David Cameron squeezed in a ‘date night’ with his wife Samantha at Britain’s trendiest restaurant, the Chiltern Firehouse, on  Wednesday night”. Dave and Sam went for a meal together. Big deal.

And what was the manner of the Foreign Secretary’s transgression? “Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary William Hague spent his third day in a row with Angelina Jolie, arriving at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict yesterday flanked by both the A-list actress and her Hollywood star husband, Brad Pitt”. So efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war are A Very Bad Thing, then.

But the real and sustained venom is reserved for Cameron and his wife, whose joint sin, remember, was going out to an upmarket restaurant. “Who has been to Chiltern Firehouse recently? The question should be, who has not?” asks Ms Moir, before conceding that she has. “On a balmy evening recently, Samantha Cameron visited the restaurant for the first time – and so did I, although not together, of course”.

The Moir bile is liberally spewed all over the supposedly sleb-filled restaurant, while the thought that ending the threat of sexual violence for perhaps hundreds of thousands of women is somehow less relevant, and the idea that the PM and his wife might get out of an evening and enjoy an interesting meal at a new eatery is merely another outlet for this author’s unending cattiness.

There was no point in this attack, other than for Dacre to remind us he still has clout.