Darren Osborne - Mail Silent

A terrorist was found guilty of using a hired van as a weapon yesterday: he had driven it into a group of worshippers outside their place of worship, killing one and inflicting life-changing injuries on others. Law enforcement agencies were as one in asserting that this was indeed an act of terror. So it might be thought that our free and fearless press would be all over the case this morning - especially the hot-on-terror Daily Mail.

Darren f***ing Osborne? What the f***'s that c*** got to do with me, c***?!?!?

But that thought would have been misplaced: the Mail has no mention of Darren Osborne on its front page today. But then, Osborne is white, and he is not a Scary Muslim (tm). He was, instead, someone who got it into his head that Muslims were seriously bad people who it was therefore his sworn duty to kill. How might he have come to this view? And there we see why the Mail might want to avoid the issue.

Not only did Osborne seek to kill Muslims, his first objective was an al-Quds day march in central London attended by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Did he want to kill Jezza? “Oh yeah, it would be one less terrorist [on] our streets … And if Sadiq Khan [the London mayor] had been there it would have been even better. It would have been like winning the lottery”. How might he have believed Corbyn and Khan were terrorists?

Ah well. Here, we need go no further than, er, the Daily Mail. And the Mail on Sunday, which we are told is a totally different paper with a totally different editor, which is total crap. The legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre is editor-in-chief of both titles, and both are adept at peddling hatred towards Labour and Muslims.

To see this hatred peddling in action, we need look no further than the Mail’s front page the day before last year’s General Election. Under the reminder “Vote To Save Britain!” we see photos of Corbyn, along with John McDonnell and Diane Abbott, under the screaming headline “APOLOGISTS FOR TERROR … the Mail accuses this troika of befriending Britain’s enemies and scorning the institutions that keep us safe”. Troika. Foreign, innit?

The Mail on Sunday, on the weekend before the last London Mayoral election, ran an inflammatory article by Tory hopeful Zac Goldsmith, showing he was just as nasty a piece of work as his late father, picturing the bus bombed in Tavistock Square in the July 7 attacks on London with the headline “On Thursday, are we really going to hand the world’s greatest city to a Labour Party that thinks terrorists are its friends?”

In case readers were not already aware which way they should think, the article added that the Metropolitan Police would be “under the control of a party that legitimises extremist views”. And who can forget the MoS also legitimising the idea of bumping off the Labour leader by headlining another rant from the not even slightly celebrated blues artiste Whinging Dan Hodges with “Labour MUST kill vampire Jezza”.

Small wonder the Mail is keeping schtum this morning. Darren Osborne may have had his head turned by a whole host of factors, but the demonising of “The Other” by the press is not exactly going to help matters. And his equating Corbyn with “terrorist” points right back at the entrance to Northcliffe House. Hang your heads in shame, Dacre doggies.