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| Paul Dacre, Daily Mail poisoner-in-chief, is quitting. Good riddance | Paul Dacre, Daily Mail poisoner-in-chief, is quitting. Good riddance |
| (25 days later) | |
| Asked for the winning formula of his Daily Mail, Lord Northcliffe replied: “I give my readers a daily hate.” No one has kept that flame burning more brightly than Paul Dacre, poisoner of the national psyche, bully-in-chief, whose iron whim has terrified prime ministers for a quarter of a century, and who has announced he will be stepping down as the paper’s editor in November. | Asked for the winning formula of his Daily Mail, Lord Northcliffe replied: “I give my readers a daily hate.” No one has kept that flame burning more brightly than Paul Dacre, poisoner of the national psyche, bully-in-chief, whose iron whim has terrified prime ministers for a quarter of a century, and who has announced he will be stepping down as the paper’s editor in November. |
| Paul Dacre, Stephen Lawrence and why hell hath no fury like an editor engaged | |
| Like all bullies he targets underdogs, imposing on the country racism, homophobia and philistinism, and shunning complexity and evidence. His sheer bully-power often frames the national debate by warping broadcasters’ news agendas, because they know the Mail makes politicians quake. Theresa May – his candidate – caves in to him every time, as paralysed on paying for social care as on Brexit. His legacy is the great Brexit divide that has torn the country in two. | Like all bullies he targets underdogs, imposing on the country racism, homophobia and philistinism, and shunning complexity and evidence. His sheer bully-power often frames the national debate by warping broadcasters’ news agendas, because they know the Mail makes politicians quake. Theresa May – his candidate – caves in to him every time, as paralysed on paying for social care as on Brexit. His legacy is the great Brexit divide that has torn the country in two. |
| Decades of straight-banana EU fabrications and myths sowed the seeds, but nothing was as shocking as his front pages in the referendum run-up, filled with dark-skinned migrants making bogus claims, criminals and terrorists heading this way. | Decades of straight-banana EU fabrications and myths sowed the seeds, but nothing was as shocking as his front pages in the referendum run-up, filled with dark-skinned migrants making bogus claims, criminals and terrorists heading this way. |
| Dacre defenders point to his championing of the murdered Stephen Lawrence – son of Dacre’s decorator – as if one case wipes clean the regular racist filth. | Dacre defenders point to his championing of the murdered Stephen Lawrence – son of Dacre’s decorator – as if one case wipes clean the regular racist filth. |
| His Mail poisons the well of human kindness with anecdotes of benefit scroungers or prisoners in jail luxury, devoid of context or statistic, misleading voters to wildly overestimate sin and risk. People think 25% of UK residents are Muslim – true figure 5%. They think 25% of the benefit budget is fraud – it’s 0.7%. They wildly misjudge spending on foreign aid – it’s 1% of gross national income. His evidence-defying campaign against the MMR – measles, mumps and rubella – vaccine surely led children to go unvaccinated. | His Mail poisons the well of human kindness with anecdotes of benefit scroungers or prisoners in jail luxury, devoid of context or statistic, misleading voters to wildly overestimate sin and risk. People think 25% of UK residents are Muslim – true figure 5%. They think 25% of the benefit budget is fraud – it’s 0.7%. They wildly misjudge spending on foreign aid – it’s 1% of gross national income. His evidence-defying campaign against the MMR – measles, mumps and rubella – vaccine surely led children to go unvaccinated. |
| There’s a myth that he has a finger on the pulse of “middle England”. But try to follow his hates and campaigns, and his “middle” is pure sham. Ed Miliband’s mansion tax plan on £2m properties was “an attack on the middle class”, as is any move against private schools’ charitable status – even though these are attended by just 7% of pupils. Cuts to top pension tax relief are another assault on the “middle”, yet they touch only the top 8%. | There’s a myth that he has a finger on the pulse of “middle England”. But try to follow his hates and campaigns, and his “middle” is pure sham. Ed Miliband’s mansion tax plan on £2m properties was “an attack on the middle class”, as is any move against private schools’ charitable status – even though these are attended by just 7% of pupils. Cuts to top pension tax relief are another assault on the “middle”, yet they touch only the top 8%. |
| With no compass as to where the true middle lies – it’s around £27,000 – his own £2.5m salary plus £1.4m bonus may skew his understanding. So may his Scottish estate, where activities include deer-stalking and grouse shooting, and his Sussex cattle farm, for which he draws bundles in EU agricultural subsidy. | With no compass as to where the true middle lies – it’s around £27,000 – his own £2.5m salary plus £1.4m bonus may skew his understanding. So may his Scottish estate, where activities include deer-stalking and grouse shooting, and his Sussex cattle farm, for which he draws bundles in EU agricultural subsidy. |
| Annexing the ordinary “middle” to the super-privileged is an age-old Tory tactic. Taxing the rich is presented as a threat to every ordinary saver and homeowner, though average house prices at around £300,000 are never touched by inheritance taxes heading towards a £1m threshold – a tax paid only on the top 6% of estates. Thus the country is beguiled. | Annexing the ordinary “middle” to the super-privileged is an age-old Tory tactic. Taxing the rich is presented as a threat to every ordinary saver and homeowner, though average house prices at around £300,000 are never touched by inheritance taxes heading towards a £1m threshold – a tax paid only on the top 6% of estates. Thus the country is beguiled. |
| Thanks to Mail hate speech, Gina Miller, Stella Creasy and other Dacred women face death threats | Thanks to Mail hate speech, Gina Miller, Stella Creasy and other Dacred women face death threats |
| His political modus operandi is to go for the jugular, to play the person, not the ball. So when Carolyn Fairbairn, director general of the CBI, expressed her members’ alarm at how a hard Brexit might kill their businesses, Dacre’s Mail did her over – and her family – in a savage double-page spread. | His political modus operandi is to go for the jugular, to play the person, not the ball. So when Carolyn Fairbairn, director general of the CBI, expressed her members’ alarm at how a hard Brexit might kill their businesses, Dacre’s Mail did her over – and her family – in a savage double-page spread. |
| It works: industrialists dare not put their head above the Brexit parapet for fear of the Mail lopping it off. When Gina Miller bravely went to the high court to secure parliament’s right to a Brexit say, he found no actual dirt, but called her “a gloating Guyana-born investment manager who alternates between glorying in self-promotion and complaining that her safety is under threat”. Thanks to Mail nastiness, she – like Stella Creasy and other Dacred women – faces death threats. | It works: industrialists dare not put their head above the Brexit parapet for fear of the Mail lopping it off. When Gina Miller bravely went to the high court to secure parliament’s right to a Brexit say, he found no actual dirt, but called her “a gloating Guyana-born investment manager who alternates between glorying in self-promotion and complaining that her safety is under threat”. Thanks to Mail nastiness, she – like Stella Creasy and other Dacred women – faces death threats. |
| Why do people – especially women – read it? There is a gobsmacking fascination with his outrageous headlines: how far will he go? Women are a favoured target, the Mail acting as playground bitch, forever papping celebrities putting on weight, spotted without makeup, revealing cellulite in a bikini. The case of the Royal Navy’s Faye Turney was a classic: after she was captured by the Iranians, the Mail joined the chequebook stampede for her story, offering – according to the defence department – “a very substantial sum”. But when she told her story elsewhere, Dacre took revenge, savaging her as an unfit mother: a picture of soldiers’ coffins bore the headline, “They won’t be selling their stories.” | Why do people – especially women – read it? There is a gobsmacking fascination with his outrageous headlines: how far will he go? Women are a favoured target, the Mail acting as playground bitch, forever papping celebrities putting on weight, spotted without makeup, revealing cellulite in a bikini. The case of the Royal Navy’s Faye Turney was a classic: after she was captured by the Iranians, the Mail joined the chequebook stampede for her story, offering – according to the defence department – “a very substantial sum”. But when she told her story elsewhere, Dacre took revenge, savaging her as an unfit mother: a picture of soldiers’ coffins bore the headline, “They won’t be selling their stories.” |
| He has had a glorious last hurrah with the Brexit triumph. He can claim he won 52% of Britain – though casting 48% as his detested “metropolitan elite” is beyond absurd. He leaves in November, quitting the hot seat before Brexit is either too soft for him to claim victory, or a hard-Brexit nuclear winter causes blockages at Dover; makes company HQs, scientists and medics flee across the channel; and leaves British fruit and veg to rot in the fields – or worse. | He has had a glorious last hurrah with the Brexit triumph. He can claim he won 52% of Britain – though casting 48% as his detested “metropolitan elite” is beyond absurd. He leaves in November, quitting the hot seat before Brexit is either too soft for him to claim victory, or a hard-Brexit nuclear winter causes blockages at Dover; makes company HQs, scientists and medics flee across the channel; and leaves British fruit and veg to rot in the fields – or worse. |
| As editor-in-chief and chair of the Associated Newspapers board, his hot, fiery breath and sweary bollockings may bear down on his successor. As he reputedly frightens his proprietor, Lord Rothermere, Dacre may be the one to appoint an editor in his own image, just as he followed the moralising tics and toxic politics of his predecessor, David English. | As editor-in-chief and chair of the Associated Newspapers board, his hot, fiery breath and sweary bollockings may bear down on his successor. As he reputedly frightens his proprietor, Lord Rothermere, Dacre may be the one to appoint an editor in his own image, just as he followed the moralising tics and toxic politics of his predecessor, David English. |
| Optimists hope the sheer democracy-threatening anarchism of his recent assaults on the supreme court as “enemies of the people” has finally stirred Rothermere to rid us of this mania. The obvious replacement is the Mail on Sunday editor, Geordie Greig, friend of the Rothermeres and well-liked in moderate Tory circles. But long-term enmity between Dacre and Greig has exploded into print with the MoS’s robust remainer stance landing like an Exocet into the heart of Dacre’s daily. | Optimists hope the sheer democracy-threatening anarchism of his recent assaults on the supreme court as “enemies of the people” has finally stirred Rothermere to rid us of this mania. The obvious replacement is the Mail on Sunday editor, Geordie Greig, friend of the Rothermeres and well-liked in moderate Tory circles. But long-term enmity between Dacre and Greig has exploded into print with the MoS’s robust remainer stance landing like an Exocet into the heart of Dacre’s daily. |
| Who else? Mentioned is George Osborne, the London Evening Standard editor: Mail-hard on austerity, but like Greig sharing none of Dacre’s retro social conservatism. At least one cloud would be lifted: Dacre’s nostalgic miasma of an imagined 1950s in the days before divorce, career women, single mothers, perverts and ethnic minorities caused our mortal moral decline. | Who else? Mentioned is George Osborne, the London Evening Standard editor: Mail-hard on austerity, but like Greig sharing none of Dacre’s retro social conservatism. At least one cloud would be lifted: Dacre’s nostalgic miasma of an imagined 1950s in the days before divorce, career women, single mothers, perverts and ethnic minorities caused our mortal moral decline. |
| • Polly Toynbee is a Guardian staff columnist | • Polly Toynbee is a Guardian staff columnist |
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