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| David Cameron battled the Daily Mail for national mastery, and lost | |
| (about 13 hours later) | |
| If anyone was still in the slightest doubt about why David Cameron might have tried to get Paul Dacre sacked as editor of the Daily Mail during the Brexit referendum campaign, as alleged by the BBC’s Newsnight this week, they only had to pick up a copy of Dacre’s paper on Thursday morning. | If anyone was still in the slightest doubt about why David Cameron might have tried to get Paul Dacre sacked as editor of the Daily Mail during the Brexit referendum campaign, as alleged by the BBC’s Newsnight this week, they only had to pick up a copy of Dacre’s paper on Thursday morning. |
| Seven months on from the result that brought Cameron’s prime ministership crashing down, Dacre’s Brexiteering triumphalism is undiminished. “Momentous day for Britain – we have lift-off!” shouted the headline on a front page that contained no fewer than three union jacks and an image of Winston Churchill, all triggered by Wednesday’s crushing Commons vote to trigger Brexit. Only 114 MPs “betray will of the people”, said the paper, exuding joy and menace. | Seven months on from the result that brought Cameron’s prime ministership crashing down, Dacre’s Brexiteering triumphalism is undiminished. “Momentous day for Britain – we have lift-off!” shouted the headline on a front page that contained no fewer than three union jacks and an image of Winston Churchill, all triggered by Wednesday’s crushing Commons vote to trigger Brexit. Only 114 MPs “betray will of the people”, said the paper, exuding joy and menace. |
| Watch out for more industrial-strength journalistic rhetoric and abuse on Friday, too, when the Mail gets another chance to savage the Bank of England governor Mark Carney after the latest upward revision of the UK’s post-referendum growth forecast. Dacre, who during the past year has produced boundlessly self-confident anti-EU and anti-elite front pages such as “Who will speak for England?”, “Take a bow, Britain” and “Enemies of the people” is not a man to waste an open goal. | Watch out for more industrial-strength journalistic rhetoric and abuse on Friday, too, when the Mail gets another chance to savage the Bank of England governor Mark Carney after the latest upward revision of the UK’s post-referendum growth forecast. Dacre, who during the past year has produced boundlessly self-confident anti-EU and anti-elite front pages such as “Who will speak for England?”, “Take a bow, Britain” and “Enemies of the people” is not a man to waste an open goal. |
| Our politicians still belve that the press still rules the political ring. It’s as if the digital age never existed | Our politicians still belve that the press still rules the political ring. It’s as if the digital age never existed |
| On one level, it can seem almost quaint that British politicians continue to be mesmerised by something as retro and rust-belt as a daily print newspaper. After all, Donald Trump has shown how it is possible to bully, belittle and bypass the written press and make it to the White House by communicating with the voters almost wholly through TV and Twitter. Talk to anyone who makes a living in political campaigning and they see this as Britain’s future too. All they talk about most of the time is the importance of social media and data-driven campaigning. | On one level, it can seem almost quaint that British politicians continue to be mesmerised by something as retro and rust-belt as a daily print newspaper. After all, Donald Trump has shown how it is possible to bully, belittle and bypass the written press and make it to the White House by communicating with the voters almost wholly through TV and Twitter. Talk to anyone who makes a living in political campaigning and they see this as Britain’s future too. All they talk about most of the time is the importance of social media and data-driven campaigning. |
| Yet today, just when the print media is facing a life-or-death struggle to come up with a business model that can survive the decline of print sales and the torrential defection of advertising to Facebook and Google, most of our politicians remain immovable in their belief that the press still rules the political ring. It’s as if the digital age never existed. | Yet today, just when the print media is facing a life-or-death struggle to come up with a business model that can survive the decline of print sales and the torrential defection of advertising to Facebook and Google, most of our politicians remain immovable in their belief that the press still rules the political ring. It’s as if the digital age never existed. |
| Cameron exemplified this. Early on his relationship with Dacre was distant and reasonable. But it soured over the prime minister’s appointment of Andy Coulson (too Murdoch), went toxic over the setting up of the Leveson inquiry, which Dacre loathed, and became a fight to the death over Europe. Why Europe? Because the Mail is a paper that dislikes foreigners, opposes anything that smacks of socialism, however faintly, and hates any puncturing of its yearning for lost British greatness. The EU embodies all three. | Cameron exemplified this. Early on his relationship with Dacre was distant and reasonable. But it soured over the prime minister’s appointment of Andy Coulson (too Murdoch), went toxic over the setting up of the Leveson inquiry, which Dacre loathed, and became a fight to the death over Europe. Why Europe? Because the Mail is a paper that dislikes foreigners, opposes anything that smacks of socialism, however faintly, and hates any puncturing of its yearning for lost British greatness. The EU embodies all three. |
| Yet Cameron was not alone in his focus on the Mail. Tony Blair feared it too, partly for traditional Labour reasons, partly because Gordon Brown cultivated Dacre relentlessly, even inviting him to the funeral of his first child, Jennifer, in 2002. Theresa May’s aloof disinterest in the press always makes an exception for the Mail. | Yet Cameron was not alone in his focus on the Mail. Tony Blair feared it too, partly for traditional Labour reasons, partly because Gordon Brown cultivated Dacre relentlessly, even inviting him to the funeral of his first child, Jennifer, in 2002. Theresa May’s aloof disinterest in the press always makes an exception for the Mail. |
| Is this merely the anachronistic groupthink of the political class? Maybe. But there is no doubting that Dacre believes in, and flaunts, the Mail’s power just as much as the political class fears and cringes before it. The importance of the Today programme’s John Humphrys stems partly from the fact that he skilfully raises Mail-influenced ideas in his interviews. It would be bold for any Tory leader, and even for any Labour leader, to ignore Dacre and win. | Is this merely the anachronistic groupthink of the political class? Maybe. But there is no doubting that Dacre believes in, and flaunts, the Mail’s power just as much as the political class fears and cringes before it. The importance of the Today programme’s John Humphrys stems partly from the fact that he skilfully raises Mail-influenced ideas in his interviews. It would be bold for any Tory leader, and even for any Labour leader, to ignore Dacre and win. |
| It is tempting to see the battle between Cameron and Dacre in purely personal terms, as Newsnight did. The privileged Etonian liberal versus the rightwing meritocrat is one way of looking at the tussle – providing you don’t forget that it’s Dacre who has the grouse moor in the Highlands, not Cameron. The political is personal where Cameron and Dacre are concerned. In private Cameron has called Dacre a “fuckwit”. | It is tempting to see the battle between Cameron and Dacre in purely personal terms, as Newsnight did. The privileged Etonian liberal versus the rightwing meritocrat is one way of looking at the tussle – providing you don’t forget that it’s Dacre who has the grouse moor in the Highlands, not Cameron. The political is personal where Cameron and Dacre are concerned. In private Cameron has called Dacre a “fuckwit”. |
| Even so, prime ministers don’t often go to the lengths that Cameron did with Dacre over the referendum. First he invited Dacre to the No 10 flat, where he implored the Mail editor to cut him some slack over the campaign. When that failed, he crossed a rarely crossed line: lobbying the Mail proprietor Viscount Rothermere – an EU remainer who has long been embarrassed by his editor – to axe Dacre. Rothermere rightly defended his editor. | Even so, prime ministers don’t often go to the lengths that Cameron did with Dacre over the referendum. First he invited Dacre to the No 10 flat, where he implored the Mail editor to cut him some slack over the campaign. When that failed, he crossed a rarely crossed line: lobbying the Mail proprietor Viscount Rothermere – an EU remainer who has long been embarrassed by his editor – to axe Dacre. Rothermere rightly defended his editor. |
| Alastair Campbell suggested to the BBC this week that this sort of thing is not uncommon. Yet my colleague Roy Greenslade, a former Fleet Street editor himself, is sceptical. When proprietors fire editors, he said, it can be for not doing the proprietor’s bidding. Unless Campbell knows better, however, it’s rarely because the prime minister has triggered the process. | Alastair Campbell suggested to the BBC this week that this sort of thing is not uncommon. Yet my colleague Roy Greenslade, a former Fleet Street editor himself, is sceptical. When proprietors fire editors, he said, it can be for not doing the proprietor’s bidding. Unless Campbell knows better, however, it’s rarely because the prime minister has triggered the process. |
| In the end, though, the struggle between Dacre and Cameron was a proxy for something bigger and more tragic. The referendum, and indeed the recourse to referendums in general, should be seen in part as a battle for national mastery between the parliamentary system, embodied by Cameron, and the unbridled press, embodied by Dacre. Every one of those Mail front pages of the past year, including Thursday’s, has been a celebration of an amazing journalistic confidence, and of a will, unique among British news organisations for more than a century, to wield political power in pursuit of what it sees as lost British greatness, the old Adam of the English right. | In the end, though, the struggle between Dacre and Cameron was a proxy for something bigger and more tragic. The referendum, and indeed the recourse to referendums in general, should be seen in part as a battle for national mastery between the parliamentary system, embodied by Cameron, and the unbridled press, embodied by Dacre. Every one of those Mail front pages of the past year, including Thursday’s, has been a celebration of an amazing journalistic confidence, and of a will, unique among British news organisations for more than a century, to wield political power in pursuit of what it sees as lost British greatness, the old Adam of the English right. |
| From the days of Lord Northcliffe, the evil genius of British journalism, through the paper’s successive imperialism, fascist sympathies and post-imperial hatred of Europe, the Mail has sought political power as well as journalistic success. In the 1920s it even ran candidates in elections. If Rothermere is Northcliffe’s hereditary heir, Dacre is his political heir. And on 23 June last year Dacre won. He is the man who defeated parliament – and he knows it. | From the days of Lord Northcliffe, the evil genius of British journalism, through the paper’s successive imperialism, fascist sympathies and post-imperial hatred of Europe, the Mail has sought political power as well as journalistic success. In the 1920s it even ran candidates in elections. If Rothermere is Northcliffe’s hereditary heir, Dacre is his political heir. And on 23 June last year Dacre won. He is the man who defeated parliament – and he knows it. |
| Today more than ever the Mail has a self-interest in the denigration of parliament, and an equally profound self-interest in the promotion of referendums it can shape and destabilise by its journalism. | Today more than ever the Mail has a self-interest in the denigration of parliament, and an equally profound self-interest in the promotion of referendums it can shape and destabilise by its journalism. |
| Though it speaks incessantly about the will of the people and the freedom of the press, it is in the end only interested in the will and freedom of the Daily Mail. Neither of these have anything to do with democracy or with good government – as the debacle of post-referendum politics is making clear each day. Cameron might have been a fool to try to oust Dacre, but one can easily understand precisely why he tried. | Though it speaks incessantly about the will of the people and the freedom of the press, it is in the end only interested in the will and freedom of the Daily Mail. Neither of these have anything to do with democracy or with good government – as the debacle of post-referendum politics is making clear each day. Cameron might have been a fool to try to oust Dacre, but one can easily understand precisely why he tried. |
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