Thursday 22 April 2010

The Daily Mail and reactionary groups

Peter Black posts, exposing the Daily Mail's hypocrisy in smearing Nick Clegg with links to a Nazi. The Mail's history of cuddling up to dictators and of resisting social reforms is well-known to students of the media in this country. When I was in my first job in London, the senior clerk, a long-time socialist, showed me a pre-war headline from the Mail which warned that a vote for Herbert Morrison's Labour party in the London County Council elections was equivalent to endorsing a Soviet Russian takeover. I should explain that Morrison occupied the same relative place on the political spectrum as the Blairites do today.

The Mail's proprietor has a more pragmatic and less philosophical reason for not wanting to see Vince Cable in the Chancellor's office. He is not domiciled in the United Kingdom and has made maximum use of our current tax laws. Much of the saving, which enables us to promise to take the first £10,000 of earnings out of tax, detailed by Vince at the manifesto launch consists of closing tax loopholes.

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