True colours

I've always had, like all the 'bleeding-heart lefties' they so despise, a healthy contempt for the Daily Mail. It's always been a sort of vaguely amused version though, the sort of feeling you get when confronted by somebody whose views on race/immigration/sexuality come straight out of a 70s sitcom. They have, though, these past few days, revealed just how vile they really are.

Last Saturday they ran this article on Ed Milliband's late father, attacking a man who was in no position to defend himself any longer. When Milliband used his right of reply on Tuesday to point out that his father had in fact served this country in the Navy during World War II, and that he did not share the dead man's political ideology, they responded with this. Far worse, though, they printed a picture of the man's grave, with the caption 'Grave socialist', and it emerged they'd sent journalists incognito to infiltrate a Milliband family memorial service, something for which even they have had to apologise, calling it an 'error of judgement'.

Perhaps to bring into sharp focus just how far out of line they are, even Cameron has criticised the piece, saying that if someone attacked his father he'd 'do the same thing' as Milliband, who's demanded an apology. (Cameron, I have to say, has again showed his human qualities with his response to this, just as he did after the rugby player pulled the 'bunny ears' stunt outside Number 10. What a pity his politics are as they are.)

With the exception of that grave shot, the Mail remains unapologetic, and in this whole affair have shown their truest colours in all their infamy. How quick they were to (rightly) criticise people who joyfully danced on Thatcher's grave so recently, and how hypocritical to do so as blatantly as they have on the grave of a political opponent's father.

I'd usually shrink from ever linking to Mail articles on this blog - many of them are simply deliberately provocative, designed to stir up righteous indignation and visits to their website - but these have to be seen to understand the true nature of this rag. I can only hope, in time, that this kind of tactic backfires on them where it really matters; circulation. Regrettably though, I suspect that the type of people who actually buy the Mail wholeheartedly agree with not only the sentiment expressed in these pieces but the way in which they've been expressed at the expense of a dead man's reputation.

Horribly for me, this has resulted in me having to agree with Alastair Campbell, never my favourite Labourite, in calling the Mail 'vile', 'backward' and 'far-right', and suggesting it represents "the worst of British values posing as the best". A plague upon them.


Follow-up edit: An excellent run-down of the generally cheering web-sphere response to this whole thing can be found here. I particularly like the tweets where other people explain how their fathers 'hated Britain' too, especially, "My dad shouted 'Bugger it!' when he couldn't find a car parking space in Hemel Hempstead in 1979."