Chapter one of that story takes us back to last February and the critical moment when David Cameron returned from his negotiation with the EU ministers to present his gamble to the public. He came back from Brussels with predictably few new concessions but with a sense, reinforced by his gilded passage through political life, that he could charm both his cabinet and the Tory press on to his side.
In hindsight that was a catastrophic miscalculation. The first inkling of this came on the morning of 2 February when the Mail pre-empted his announcement in a front page that asked: “Is that it then, Mr Cameron?” before going on to suggest that “Cameron and Brussels stitched together a deal designed to keep us in the EU…” That piece was written by the Mail’s then political editor, James Slack. It emerged subsequently that Cameron invited Paul Dacre, the Mail’s editor, to a meeting later that day to discuss ways in which the paper might be persuaded, pointedly, to “cut him some slack” on his EU deal.
The following day the Mail threw the Prime Minister’s request back in his face by devoting its front page to “The great delusion!” beside a close-up of Cameron looking as untrustworthy as the more regular inhabitants of that space, Sir Shifty and Tony Blair. To hammer home the point the following day, the Mail took the unusual step of running its leader comment as a splash on page one. The question asked was “Who will speak for England?” referring to a parliamentary heckle once used against Neville Chamberlain, which helped end both appeasement and his career. The Mail left us in no doubt who the contemporary Chamberlain was. “As in 1939 we are at a crossroads in our island history,” the paper trumpeted (leaving aside the fact that at the previous crossroads, its own editorials stood sympathetic to fascism and acted as a recruiting sergeant for Oswald Mosley. “Hurrah for the Blackshirts!”).
In its new declaration of war on the government the paper railed at how debate was being suppressed. “Eurosceptic MPs have been muzzled – banned from speaking on the most momentous issue of our time…” (a contention that clearly proved false). It then sought to answer the question in its headline, sorting through the alternatives to Cameron. Having trashed the character of Boris and the careerism of Gove, the editorial ended with what appeared to be a whisper in the ear of the then home secretary, a quiet memorandum of understanding. “How disappointing that Theresa May, who spoke so powerfully against mass immigration last year, appears to have been bought off … With a tsunami of migrants flooding across Europe, can such tinkering with the small print really be enough to silence her reservations?” Keep your head down, Theresa, it seemed to say, and all this can be yours.
In one of the few interviews Dacre has ever given
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/14/is-paul-dacre-most-dangerous-man-in-britain-daily-mail
In hindsight that was a catastrophic miscalculation. The first inkling of this came on the morning of 2 February when the Mail pre-empted his announcement in a front page that asked: “Is that it then, Mr Cameron?” before going on to suggest that “Cameron and Brussels stitched together a deal designed to keep us in the EU…” That piece was written by the Mail’s then political editor, James Slack. It emerged subsequently that Cameron invited Paul Dacre, the Mail’s editor, to a meeting later that day to discuss ways in which the paper might be persuaded, pointedly, to “cut him some slack” on his EU deal.
The following day the Mail threw the Prime Minister’s request back in his face by devoting its front page to “The great delusion!” beside a close-up of Cameron looking as untrustworthy as the more regular inhabitants of that space, Sir Shifty and Tony Blair. To hammer home the point the following day, the Mail took the unusual step of running its leader comment as a splash on page one. The question asked was “Who will speak for England?” referring to a parliamentary heckle once used against Neville Chamberlain, which helped end both appeasement and his career. The Mail left us in no doubt who the contemporary Chamberlain was. “As in 1939 we are at a crossroads in our island history,” the paper trumpeted (leaving aside the fact that at the previous crossroads, its own editorials stood sympathetic to fascism and acted as a recruiting sergeant for Oswald Mosley. “Hurrah for the Blackshirts!”).
In its new declaration of war on the government the paper railed at how debate was being suppressed. “Eurosceptic MPs have been muzzled – banned from speaking on the most momentous issue of our time…” (a contention that clearly proved false). It then sought to answer the question in its headline, sorting through the alternatives to Cameron. Having trashed the character of Boris and the careerism of Gove, the editorial ended with what appeared to be a whisper in the ear of the then home secretary, a quiet memorandum of understanding. “How disappointing that Theresa May, who spoke so powerfully against mass immigration last year, appears to have been bought off … With a tsunami of migrants flooding across Europe, can such tinkering with the small print really be enough to silence her reservations?” Keep your head down, Theresa, it seemed to say, and all this can be yours.
In one of the few interviews Dacre has ever given
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/14/is-paul-dacre-most-dangerous-man-in-britain-daily-mail
