The Sun Promotes Stalking

After the resignation of Emily Thornberry from the shadow cabinet yesterday evening, Rupe’s downmarket troops at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun could not let the matter drop: they had to not only get a story from the owner of the house draped in the flags of St George, but also to get him and his white van to venture to Islington to confront Ms Thornberry.

That's what I think of youse bladdy privacy, yer bladdy Labour supporting Pommie drongoes!

Was White Van Dan (for it was he) being invited by her? Well, no he wasn’t. He was also going to visit the nearby address of Mil The Younger, who had also not invited him. The Sun’s hacks did not see anything wrong in his fetching up on the doorstep of a woman politician who was already being sneered at by every right-leaning media outlet. This was, to their website man Tim Gatt, newsworthy.

It was also deemed newsworthy by the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, and The Great Guido wasted no time in telling his followers in slightly threatening terms “Perhaps [Emily Thornberry] should stay in one of her many other homes tonight” (Staines and his wife own at least four properties, including a flat in Parliament View, where two-bed ones go for £1.45 million).

Any suggestion that this was creepy or threatening was dismissed: typical was Mark Wallace of Conservative Home deflecting criticism from Rosie Robertson with “in no way threatening – as usual, you’re being ridiculous”. Also making light of the affair was Mid Bedfordshire’s Tory MP (yes, it’s her again) Nadine Dorries.

“I’m going to ask my (hopefully) future son in law to take a picture of his white plumber’s van outside his terraced council house” she Tweeted. But then a thought entered: Ms Dorries, with the support of the Fawkes rabble, has been pursuing a persistent critic of hers who turned up at a hustings – that would be a public meeting – in her constituency in the run-up to the 2010 General Election. He was invited by concerned residents. She smeared him as a stalker.

The Dorries campaign was still active in September of this year, when she got her story into the Mail On Sunday, although the individual could not be named for legal reasons – those reasons being that he had done nothing unlawful (minor point, eh?). But, what the heck, if turning up at the invitation of a number of concerned constituents constitutes stalking, arriving uninvited on the doorstep must be worse.

So, O Great Guido, ConHome stalwart, and assorted Murdoch poodles, pray tell us why the behaviour you have all been condoning today does not merit the same pejorative response that your pal Nadine gave to someone who was actually there by invitation. Ah, but you won’t be addressing that one.

What the Sun has been encouraging not only appears threatening, but encourages copycat behaviour and worse. That means it is bang out of order.