Paul Dacre should be held to account
I find it difficult to write about Paul Dacre, the former editor of the Daily Mail, because at times I, like so many others, have been the subject of his vindictive behaviour. It started on the first day of the 2010 general election campaign when he sent a photographer to my home to stand there for weeks from dusk to dawn taking pictures every time I left the house, regardless of whether I was going to my office or to buy a pint of milk. Dacre used those pictures in all sorts of ludicrous articles. It went on for years: articles about the shape of my “derriere”; about my role as a wife and mother; he suggested my dead father was a fascist; and even claimed I benefited from human rights abuses in a Northern African country.
Some of his attacks felt like violence: outrageous, disempowering and random. At first, I struggled to understand his viciousness. With time, I realised that it was just a tactic to tame people, a sheer demonstration of power: flexing his muscles to let my husband, Nick Clegg, see how much damage he could inflict on his family. Still, I count myself lucky because what he threw at me was insignificant in comparison to the brutal attacks that he launched on so many others — and not just public figures, but Europeans, gays, immigrants, women or asylum seekers, to name just a few.
Like anyone who indulges in bullying behaviour, Dacre recoils when confronted in public. I once wrote to Dacre inviting him to debate with me publicly about the treatment of women by the media in the Christmas edition of Radio 4’s Today programme, which I had been asked to edit. He had an advantage over me, as English is not my mother tongue. But he declined the challenge — his area of comfort was not the transparency of public debate, but the shadows of his own office.
For years, most of the people he targeted did not dare to issue rebuttals. Those who did struggled to get them published by other newspapers, as many journalists and editors feared Dacre’s retaliation. When Twitter and Instagram came, some started answering back directly, which perhaps explains why he hates social media. I was able to withstand his abuse without bitterness because I am a foreigner: in fact every time he had a go at me in the UK, I got lots of brownie points in Spain, my home country. But if I had been British, I would not have been so lucky.
British Prime Minister after British Prime Minister has succumbed to his power: Theresa May used to talk to him at least three times a week. David Cameron hosted him at Number 10 “every month and a half or so,” according to his wife Samantha. Gordon Brown went as far as recording a personal video for Dacre’s 25th anniversary as editor and now Boris Johnson is considering offering him the post of Head of Ofcom, the quango that regulates the media.
It would be almost funny if he actually got the job, as Dacre spent years complaining in his newspaper about precisely those sorts of quangos. But it would not be the first time he contradicts himself: he terrorised politicians about the schools they chose for their children, but he sent his own to Eton; he denounced others as millionaires, but has a vast hunting state in Scotland and a fancy holiday hideaway in the British Virgin Islands; he called for political transparency, but went behind closed doors to lobby my husband on the BskyB takeover against Murdoch; he demonised the EU, but received European farming subsidies; and he publicly despised the establishment, but was desperate to become the head of a college at Oxford or Cambridge after retirement.
You do not need to have been a target of Dacre’s abuse to understand how ludicrous it is that Boris Johnson has asked him to become the Chair of Ofcom, a job which is meant to uphold the integrity and ethics of the media and help prevent the publication of offensive material. All you have to do is to look objectively at his record: this is the man who day after day presented women as second rate; who published articles arguing that having many women doctors hurts the NHS; who authored the outrageous cover calling for Theresa May to “crush the saboteurs”; and the one that branded all immigrants as a “swarm” (in capital letters, in case you missed it).
There are two covers of UK newspapers that made the news worldwide as examples of unethical media behaviour: the one presenting Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon as pieces of meat focusing on their legs (or “shanks” as they were described by him); and the one picturing the faces of the judges at the UK Supreme Court calling them “Enemies of the people” — both were his doing.
Dacre spent 26 years accumulating power by inflicting his views on others without any accountability. If he is being considered for a job paid for by the taxpayer, he should be made fully accountable to the British people.
