Daily mail

Watching Harriet Harman being interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg on Newsnight earlier this week was a strange experience. I felt as if I’d entered a political twilight zone where nothing was quite as it seemed. Was the deputy leader of the Labour party really saying these things? I knew she was, but it seemed so miscalculated — so unwise — it was as if Harman’s body had been taken over by someone else. A mischievous political demon, perhaps. Or Lynton Crosby. The entire interview was like a nine-minute party political broadcast for the Conservative party.

It’s curious that the story about the National Council for Civil Liberties and its links with the Paedophile Information Exchange is big news now, since it’s been common knowledge for many years, and written about in the Catholic press on a number of occasions. I researched the story back in 2006 or 2007, along with another journalist, and this was already then well-trampled territory, but the papers weren’t interested, despite my friend’s huge amount of work. He even went to Hull, I seem to remember. And back. I only got as far as Cockfosters, which was then the improbable home of the Gay and Lesbian Newspaper Archives, which was where the various pamphlets produced by PIE were kept.

When it involves metropolitan left-wingers, says the Daily Mail. For a week, it has been exposing how Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt – or “Hat and Pat” as the London left of the early 1980s knew them – committed the National Council for Civil Liberties to the cause of helping the Paedophile Information Exchange. The Mail showed that while at the NCCL (now Liberty) * Hewitt described PIE in glowing terms as ‘a campaigning/counselling group for adults attracted to children’; * The NCCL lobbied Parliament for the age of sexual consent to be cut to ten – if the child consented and ‘understood the nature of the act’.

There are good reasons for serious people to despair of the news. A minor country singer dies, and the BBC gives him the front page. An actor dies and every channel mourns him as if a president had expired. There’s one final fact that particularly sticks in the throat of serious news people: the most followed news website in the English language, by an enormous factor, is the Mail Online, purveyor of a stream of appalling ‘human interest’ stories of the lowest kind. The clear temptation is to withdraw into the bunker and lament the decadence of a ruined age. This would be a big mistake. We can face the facts head on: the most attractive, charming, sexy and compelling news outlets enjoy unparalleled influence over the minds of tens of millions of people.

When one is in one’s seventies, as I am, one begins to fear the horror of dementia and to carry out anxious checks on one’s memory to see if the brain is still working. The results in my case are not very encouraging. For example, it took me several days to remember that the film star who canoodled with Leonardo DiCaprio in the stern of the Titanic was called Kate Winslet, although I am an admirer of hers and even once met her. Nor can I remember the words of the songs and poems that I used to know by heart. Am I on my way to becoming a helpless vegetable at the mercy of resentful carers? This is the point at which one turns to the Daily Mail for comfort.

Was any one actually surprised by the splash on immigration in yesterday’s Daily Mail? Its poll (of 1,027 people by Harris/Daily Mail) suggests that nearly two thirds of people think that immigration since 2004 has not been good for British society; eight in ten think that 176,000 net immigration last year was too much; and nearly eight in ten think that the public has not been consulted adequately about the effect of immigration on the population. Actually given that the last question was framed thus: ‘Since 1997, immigration has added 2.5 million to the population. Has the public been adequately consulted about this change?’ it’s surprising that only 79 per cent agreed.

The Daily Mail appear to be avid readers of The Spectator but we're pleased that they now follow our weekly podcast, the View from 22, just as closely. It yesterday ran a story based on the comments of one of our podcast guests, Professor J Meirion Thomas, saying that £200 NHS levy on foreigners 'will attract more health tourists': Top cancer surgeon claims move would be a 'disaster'. What the Mail had to say about Thomas' take on Jeremy Hunt's efforts to tackle health tourism is powerful stuff: 'Professor Thomas, a cancer specialist, was one of the first whistleblowers to expose the financial impact of non-British residents seeking free healthcare on the NHS. 'He said: ‘It [the levy] is the worst thing they could do.

A friend has exhumed instructions issued to Daily Mail journalists by their editor, Mike Randall, in the mid-1960s, about how to behave (below). The first three items read: ‘1. No member of Daily Mail staff intrudes or is called upon to intrude into private lives where no public interest is involved. 2. No ordinary member of the public is lured, coerced or in any way pressed by a Daily Mail representative into giving an interview or picture which he is clearly unwilling to give. 3. It remains our duty at all times to expose the fraud and reveal the mountebank wherever the public interest is involved.

I have a letter in this week’s New Statesman. It is a response to an article in last week’s magazine by Mehdi Hasan. As NS Letters appear not to be published online I am pasting it here: Sir, The piece by Mehdi Hasan in last week’s magazine (‘Who needs Tommy Robinson and the EDL, when Islamophobia has gone mainstream?’) tries to infer that statements by various writers, including myself, are identical to those on show at some EDL demonstrations.   For instance he quotes some EDL supporters caught on camera chanting: “Burn the mosque!” and then quotes me as calling for ‘mosques accused of spreading “hate” to be “pulled down”.’  Mehdi then says ‘Spot the difference?

An old journalist told me that there was a time when people used to know the names of national newspaper editors. It's a mark of Fleet Street’s decline, he said, that Alan Rusbridger of the Guardian and Paul Dacre of the Mail are the only well known editors today. He added that Rusbridger is famous because he has made himself into a public figure; but people have heard of Dacre despite his being remarkably private. Neither of us could recall Dacre doing a broadcast interview or even writing an article. He’s an enigmatic beast. All of which makes Dacre’s appearance in this morning’s Guardian under the headline ‘Why is the left obsessed by the Daily Mail?’ rather interesting (he’s also written in this morning’s Mail).

The Italians are often thought of as being unpatriotic, and one can see why. They relentlessly denigrate their national institutions, abuse their politicians, and compare their democratic arrangements most unfavourably with those of the ‘more mature’ north European countries. You might conclude, therefore, that most Italians ‘hate’ Italy. But, of course, you would be wrong, just as the Daily Mail was wrong when it decided on the basis of Ralph Miliband’s political opinions that he ‘hated Britain’.

I had never really understood the acronym ROTFLMAO properly until I read about the wretched Mehdi Hasan and his hypocritical denunciation of the Daily Mail, after having applied with cringing desperation to the same paper for a job. (Dacre told him to get lost, which is to his credit). My colleague Nick Cohen has filed an excellent analysis of this business, to which you should be directed if you yourself haven’t also had the opportunity to ROTFLMAO. But at least Mehdi will be in no trouble with his religion. He is, of course, famous for quoting the Koran to the effect that unbelievers are regarded as “cattle”. And by the same logic it is perfectly ok for a Muslim to lie to a non-believer; it falls under the terms “taqiyya” or “kitman”.

Observe (above) one Mehdi Hasan in full flow on last night’s Question Time. Then look at the tweets below from the Mail’s Tim Shipman. Try not to cackle; it's rude. Mehdi Hasan, who so vociferously attacked the Daily Mail on Question Time, asked for a job in 2010 & praised the paper equally floridly — Tim Shipman (Mail) (@ShippersUnbound) October 4, 2013   @mehdirhasan to Paul Dacre, asking for a column: 'The Mail has a vitally important role to play in the national debate.' — Tim Shipman (Mail) (@ShippersUnbound) October 4, 2013   Mehdi Hasan told Paul Dacre: 'I admire your relentless focus on the need for integrity and morality in public life.