Mail Picks Strange Hill To Die On

Remember all the times the likes of Peter Hitchens told anyone who would listen that the Mail on Sunday and Daily Mail were two different titles, each with their own journalists and columnists? Ah, the predictable riposte, the righteous and outraged tone, the impression that someone was not paying attention at the back. It was all so much tosh.

The protestation of righteousness ...

Confirmation of that has some not from Hitchens - as if - but by today’s Daily Mail front page lead, where the presence of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre has ensured that the paper has told the world the hill on which it is prepared to die. In doing so, it has not merely cast itself as a victim, but also shown the Mail and MoS are as one title.

“In her own words, night Angela Rayner laughed and joked about comparisons with Sharon Stone” it begins. Note that the rest of the press pack is actually reporting news, while the occupants of the Northcliffe House bunker are pretending they were right to smear Ms Rayner, portraying others as aggressors and themselves as victims.

... the name on the byline ...

Which brings us to the main event: “With an overreach that startled MPs, the Commons Speaker summoned the Mail on Sunday’s editor to appear before him over its Angela Rayner ‘Basic Instinct’ report. To which, in the name of a free press, the Mail respectfully replies … NO, MISTER SPEAKER!” When you have no respect for your targets, you drag up the word “respect” and bandy it about righteously. It’s transparent drivel.

So who has been caused to lend their name to the by-line of this confected reverse victim screed? The Mail on Sunday’s not even slightly celebrated blues artiste Whinging Dan Hodges. Another who would like us to pretend the Mail and MoS are two different titles. Did Desperate Dan actually write the article? But that is not the point.

... the supporting pundit ...

Working for the Mail and MoS, you’re paid a shed load of money, and if the word is handed down that your name is going on the by-line, well, as Colonel Ross told Harry Palmer, that’s what you’re paid for, isn’t it? Which brings us to another Mail-to-MoS crossover columnist, Sarah “Vain” Vine, who has told Ms Rayner she should “own” the Basic Instinct smear. She’s well paid, a woman’s name was needed on the by-line, and it’s her turn.

The whole charade is dressed up as, you guessed, a FREEZE PEACH issue. Speaker Hoyle is demonised for wanting to meet the MoS editor, as if an act of censorship was being contemplated (it wasn’t). The same tactic used when the Mail smeared the memory of Ralph Miliband, by claiming it was a press freedom issue, and not a blatant act of anti-Semitism, when Ed Miliband demanded the right of reply. You know, FREEZE PEACH.

... and the c*** who's giving the f***ing orders

Ms Vine is also at pains to play the victim, because someone at the hated Guardian may or may not have made a disparaging remark about her. How dare they? That’s HER job! But, as one former Mail staffer told Nick Davies, “Dacre kills with headlines”: readers’ minds will have been made up with one glance at that front page.

Attack verging on incitement? The Mail will defend its right to do that over and over again, whether it’s politicians, lawyers, refugees, LGBT people, Muslims, the GRT community, Haz and Megs, or indeed anyone who is not the Mail’s kind of person.

The Mail titles long ago ceased to prioritise actual news. But you knew that already.

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