Arise Baron Vagina Of Monologue

An ever-reliable source of unintentional hilarity at the close of each year was the Daily Mail railing at the honours system, thundering righteously at those getting gongs who it had decided were not the Mail’s kind of people. The driving force behind the annual tirade was the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, now installed as editor-in-chief of the Mail titles.

None of your f***ing business, c***

The hilarity was because Dacre was, once again, not getting a gong. His predecessor David English had been knighted, and so had contemporaries like Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins. Wouldn’t anyone think about the poor Vagina Monologue? Dacre had been pals with Gordon Brown, but he didn’t do gongs. But now a saviour has appeared to put things right.

Alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (for it is he) has, it is now rumoured, decided to not merely hand Dacre a K, but to ennoble him: welcome Baron Dacre of Boiling Rage in the county of Righteous Hypocrisy. This act would legitimise one thing: the poisoning of political discourse, excused as journalism, to the permanent detriment of the UK’s well-being.

Paul Dacre is a remarkable phenomenon: the miraculous human form of an energy source that can take the stalest wind and piss and convert it (very noisily) into an inexhaustible stream of expletives. But like any uncontained reaction, the Dacre energy source spreads contamination, and contamination far worse than the worst nuclear leak, accident, or, perhaps, detonation.

Dacre contaminates those who work for him: they are paid well, and in exchange they do as they are told. As one former Mail man told Nick Davies, “it’s fear versus good money”. The instructions may mean indulging in homophobia, misogyny, racism (including anti-Semitism), and yes, deliberate defamation. Journalistic principles are left at the door.

Dacre contaminates his targets: Davies, in Flat Earth News, put together a roll call of well known names who had been defamed by the Mail and who had been forced to seek redress through the courts. But Davies’ work also touches on those who are not well off enough to risk going to law.

The Dacre contamination is at its most insidious here: the little people are defamed because the Mail knows it can get away with it: Sue Us If You Think You’re Hard Enough. Sue, and the Mail will just string out the process, appealing, delaying, all the while publishing more and more hit pieces on those who dare to call in lawyers. It gets prohibitively expensive, it wears down the claimants. Dacre doesn’t care. He is right, because he says so.

Dacre contaminates his own readers: they really believe that Brexit is A Very Good Thing, that the Royals are an eternal and untouchable asset to all of us, that there are a lot more Scary Muslims™ than in reality, that the elite is someone else, that the Mail is a force for good, that the precipitous decline of the UK is down to Rotten Lefties™ and unscrupulous foreigners.

Thus contaminated, they fail to question why their lot is worsening, while for the likes of Dacre, the world continues to be excellent. For him there will be no scrimping and saving: he has a house in Belgravia, a mansion in the Home Counties, an estate in Scotland (which has been, in the past, in receipt of EU farm subsidies), and both his sons went to Eton.

Hatred, boiling rage and the contamination of political discourse has made him unfeasibly rich - to the point where he, like all too many of his senior staff, has become irreparably separated from the increasingly grim reality facing those he so determinedly gaslights. As a reward for contaminating the UK, Bozo is apparently rewarding him with a place in the legislature.

Not that he will wield significant influence once there: like terrorist sympathiser Claire Fox, the ennoblement is merely another part of Bozo’s attempt to whip up a culture war as a means of providing a little more momentary interest to the proletariat. It is a signal to the world that serving the PM’s interests trumps the damage Dacre’s contamination has done.

Screwing over your country can be so lucrative. Pity about the mess, mind.

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