Mail Hits The Panic Button

With the polls still showing neither of the main parties able to establish a decisive advantage, push is coming to shove, and the realisation is dawning amont the right-leaning part of the Fourth Estate that all that abuse they have been hurling at Mil The Younger has not advanced the cause of their preferred outcome - a majority Tory Government - one jot. So a new tactic is clearly called for.

At the Northcliffe House bunker, this means one thing: forget the mere hurling of abuse, and replace that with, er, hurling a lot more abuse. Yes, desperate times bring desperate remedies, and the first sign of desperation is the front page headline: “Red Ed’s threat to confiscate unused land branded ‘Stalinist’ as backlash grows over his plan to control property market … MILIBAND THE LAND-GRABBER”.

And, as Jon Stewart might have said, two things here. One, the interpretation of Labour’s housing proposals is, shall we say, a little on the hyperbolic and colourful side. And two, the “use it or lose it” proposal for unused building land was first proposed by Labour not yesterday, but in June 2013 - nearly two years ago. And Miliband was not the first politician to propose this remedy, not that the Mail wants to tell its readers.

That, whisper it quietly, was London’s increasingly occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, but as he is a Tory, and may become leader of the party, even after his shambolic display opposite Miliband on The Andy Marr Show (tm), Mail readers are not told of his apparent moment of ideological unsoundness. Instead, there is an editorial heaping yet more abuse on the Labour leader in another attempt to panic readers.

And then, overnight, the Mail made the discovery that racked up the panic yet more: Miliband had paid Russell Brand a visit. The reaction of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre must have been a sight to behold: arms flailing, the stentorian bark even louder than before, yet more of his unfortunate underlings on the receiving end of another barrage of expletive-laden rants, or as they are called at the Mail, “drive-by shoutings”.

Here was the ultimate weapon with which to frighten the readers: Russell Brand. The Mail’s anally-retentive staff will be shuddering at their desks; the kinds of people who sit up and take notice when Brand speaks are beyond the paper’s reach. What is worse, Brand’s The Trews channel on YouTube has almost 1.1 million subscribers. And he may be about to endorse the Labour leader. You don’t want to be at the Mail right now.

Were Brand to give his support to Miliband, the loss of bowel movement control within Northcliffe House would overwhelm the plumbing within minutes. CCHQ would be similarly afflicted. The bribes offered to Andrew Sachs and his family to give their blessing to more knocking copy would be truly mountainous. Today Miliband is likened to Stalin, tomorrow Mao Zedong and Pol Pot. Baby-eating stories may have to be prepared.

Daily Mail is melting down, melting down, melting down … all the way to London Bridge.