Dominic Lawson - What A C***

To no surprise at all, the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday have decided to stake out different positions on the suitability of the loathsome Toby Young for a board position at the new Office for Students. While the MoS gave Tobes both barrels yesterday over his appalling past behaviour, this coming on the back of writers at the Murdoch Times passing equally adverse comment, today the Mail has leapt to Young’s defence.

Columnist of the year. No, don't laugh

So the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre has ordered Dominic Lawson over the top in no style at all to tell the world that Tobes is a Wonderful Human Being and the ruckus over his appointment is all the fault of the Rotten Lefties (tm), despite several Tory MPs expressing disquiet and indeed disgust at the undeserved promotion.

So here’s how Dom sets the scene. “What the former Education Secretary, Michael Gove, called 'the Blob' - the Left-wing educational establishment 0 loathes Tories, especially ones who have set up free schools: Young is everything they hate and they are determined to blackball him from their club … To that extent, he has my sympathy and great admiration (fighting 'the Blob' requires tremendous determination and even courage)”. It also requires a highly creative imagination, because “the Blob” does not exist.

That does not deter Lawson, who then sells the pass big time: “Last week, for example, the actress Kathy Burke responded to a tweet by the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, defending Toby Young's appointment, with: 'He's a **** and so are you.’ … In turn, the Editor of Channel 4 News, Ben de Pear, 'liked' Ms Burke's tweet calling both Tories by a four-letter term for the female genitalia”. Does he mean The C Word?

As Derek Jameson might have observed, he surely does. And then comes the bollock dropping moment: “This does provide useful confirmation of the political outlook of the editor of Channel 4 News: but can you imagine senior figures at supposedly respectable national broadcasters in any other era publicly engaging in such abuse and thinking they were being clever in doing so?” Er, hello Dom, what newspaper are you writing for?

What's f***ing wrong with me telling that c*** Lawson what to f***ing well write, c***?!?!?

Here’s what Nick Davies said of the Daily Mail’s editor in his go-to book on the workings of the press, Flat Earth News. “A woman who edited a section of the paper told me: ‘They call him the Vagina Monologue because he calls so many people a c***. He would stalk through the newsroom - it’s ten to eight in the evening, the paper is ready to go, and he’s shouting ‘What the f*** is this, you c***, there’s not a f***ing brain in this office’”. 

It was not an isolated occurrence. One journalist who became fed up with his lot at the Mail recalled “The next day, I rang the news desk and said ‘I am going to leave’. They went and told Dacre and came back to me and said ‘Paul says you’re a complete c***’”.

Yet there is Dominic Lawson, getting all righteous about others doing what his boss does more or less when he breathes. Dom even tries to justify Tobes’ Comic Relief masturbation Tweet: “I think Toby Young's yucky tweet about Cowell's tear-jerking appearance in Kenya for Comic Relief was a mockery of what he saw as the manipulation of emotions by the presenter - and of those who go on Twitter purely to declaim their own deep human sensitivity”. The only jerking, Dominic Lawson, is coming from you.

As Derek and Clive might have said, “That Dominic Lawson, eh? What a c***”.