Paul dacre

Wednesday

William Atkinson

Put Paul Dacre in the Lords

From our UK edition

For those us who dabble in journalism, it is a constant effort to make our prose as engaging, punchy, and robust as our limited vocabularies can manage. It is thus utterly refreshing and deeply imposing to be reminded of how best to do it by a master of their craft. Exhibit A: Paul Dacre’s statement following Prince Harry’s loss in court yesterday. Read it and grin. Dacre and his publications stood for people like us: ordinary suburban Brits ‘There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family’. ‘I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case’. This ‘trumped-up action’ raises ‘profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession’.

Thursday

Quentin Letts

Best of the Blob: who would be picked for its 1st XV?

From our UK edition

Selectors for the Blob have chosen their 1st XV. Fans of The Game sometimes ask, as they do about Barbarians RFC: ‘Who are these people, do they have any supporters and who exactly pays them?’ Well, now we have the answer to at least that first question. Full back: Sir Philip Barton, head of the diplomatic service. Recovering from injuries after a sticky select committee hearing on Afghanistan. Sometimes drops the ball but popular with professionals for telling civil servants not to work weekends or more than eight hours a day owing to dangers of ‘burn-out’. Was holidaying at a family château in the Dordogne while Afghanistan was crumbling. Good to see a man lead by example. Left wing: Former Guardian editor Dame Alan Rusbridger.

Thursday

Douglas Murray

At last, the Conservatives are showing some fight in the culture war

From our UK edition

A beautiful noise rang out last week in the wake of the news that the government is considering Charles Moore to become the new chairman of the BBC and Paul Dacre to be the head of the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom. The noise was the sound of the British left wailing that toys they thought were theirs alone might now (under a Conservative government) finally go to identifiable conservatives. The former editor of the Guardian Alan Rusbridger shrieked that ‘this is what an oligarchy looks like’. This and similar tweets were presumably sent from the lodgings of the Oxford college that Rusbridger was made principal of five years ago. Others who screamed themselves sick included BBC employees who briefed that Moore’s appointment ‘would shatter morale. People will leave.

Saturday

Steerpike

Paul Dacre and Boris Johnson: ‘the Boston strangler’ and the ‘alley cat’

From our UK edition

Paul Dacre, the former editor of the Daily Mail, has reportedly been asked by the Prime Minister to chair the broadcasting regulator Ofcom. This is the same Paul Dacre who, when put in charge of the Press Complaints Commission, Boris Johnson compared to ‘putting the Boston Strangler in charge of the code of practice for door-to-door salesmen’. The same Paul Dacre who, when Boris Johnson was elected Tory leader, said that ‘the party of family values has chosen as leader a man of whom to say he has the morals of an alley cat would be to libel the feline species’. To Mr Steerpike, this doesn't seem like the best start to a working relationship.