on media Raymond Snoddy hopes for a shift in direction at the Mail


New driver, different track for Mail train?


I


t is not often that the departure of an editor or a move ‘upstairs’ could have real political significance.


Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail is just such an editor – for good or ill. Many words have already been


devoted, in a form of living obituary, as to where the judgment should lie on Dacre.


The Mail ran socially useful and sometimes brave campaigns on everything from Stephen Lawrence to removing plastic from our beaches; this was hard-nosed professional journalism of a rare intensity. Then there was a much darker side –


a relentless, right-wing Conservatism and unremitting commitment to Brexit. The latter was many years in the making, long before the term was ever coined. If a top civil servant will be remembered by only a single phrase – ‘economical with the truth’ – then the editorship of Paul Dacre should be remembered by a single headline. England’s independent judges were deemed ‘Enemies of the People’ in a disgraceful echo of Nazi Germany. This was followed by years of demonising immigrants in front page after front page, helping to pave the way for a vote that many experts believe will, at the very least, make Daily Mail readers poorer than they would otherwise have been. Then, in recent weeks, there has been a further coarsening of political discourse by branding politicians with different points of view as ‘traitors’. As a result – despite occasional good


works, including commitment to a free press, and business success – the


final judgment on the journalism of Paul Dacre has to be overwhelmingly negative. But that is the past or soon to become the past. The interesting thing is what


happens next. In the context of the newspaper


industry’s approach to the referendum, one of the most remarkable anomalies was the fact that Mail on Sunday editor Geordie Greig had the freedom to bring his newspaper out in support of Remain.


Greig, the incoming editor of the


Daily Mail, is unlikely to change the stance of the paper dramatically but, at the very least, it could soften at the edges. Dacre was sufficiently worried about


the prospect to warn in The Spectator that it would be commercial suicide, to his mind, to suddenly turn the Mail into a Remoaner paper. That is not going to happen


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The Mail ran socially useful and sometimes brave campaigns. Then there was a much darker side


but it is not impossible for the Daily Mail to remain true to its Brexit credentials while giving space to the argument that there should be a referendum on the terms when they are finally known. At the very least Greig, a


social friend of the proprietor, will have the power to curb the flow of mindless, anti-democratic propaganda against the EU and all its works that has been the hallmark of Dacre’s reign. Under Greig, judges will become judges again rather than enemies of the people and the balance of power in the


newspaper industry could shift away from a hard Brexit. Greig will also have demographics


on his side. Three years’ worth of young people will have reached voting age since the referendum and, with more than 500,000 people dying every year in England and Wales alone, the political outlook could be more fluid than expected. As Daily Mail readers die, surely one of Greig’s tasks will be to hunt for younger readers? The change of Daily Mail editorship, despite Dacre’s new role at its publisher, could turn out to be a greater catalyst for change than many imagine.


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