Mike Molloy is probably one of the nicest men who ever edited a major Fleet Street newspaper. He was enormously popular with his staff during his 10-year stint as editor of the Daily Mirror from 1975 to 1985, and during the many years he spent as assorted kinds of associate, assistant and deputy editor on the paper before he got the top job.
During the whole of that period, and during the subsequent years he spent as editor in chief of Mirror Group newspapers, the dear old Daily Mirror was a by-word for loyalty to the Labour Party. And for Mike – unlike some other Fleet Street editors – keeping it loyal was no hypocritical exercise dictated by a domineering proprietor. When he advised his four million readers to vote Labour, he was only urging them to do what he intended to do himself.
For Mike was brought up by his much loved dad to believe that the Labour Party was the best hope for ordinary people to make a better life for themselves. How do I know this? Because he tells me so in an article in the Daily Mail headlined: “It would break dad’s heart but I’m voting Tory”.
Yes, that’s right: he’s voting Tory and he announces it in the Daily Mail. In my book, that is two outrages for the price of one. I can’t say I find it easy to comprehend either of them, let alone to forgive. But of the two, choosing to trumpet one’s treachery in the most viciously anti-Labour newspaper in the land is the more unforgivable of the two.
Not surprisingly, Molloy does not attempt to explain why he wrote his confession for the Mail rather than, say, seek the rich rewards of writing for Tribune. But I understand that it arose from a paragraph in one of the Mail’s many gossip columns saying that he was planning to vote Tory at the forthcoming election. The Mail’s top brass, who have never been known to miss an opportunity to kick the Labour Party’s backside when an opportunity offers itself, promptly phoned Molloy and asked him to write a piece.
Of course, he could have said no. But he didn’t, and being an accomplished professional he was able to deliver 1,000-or-so highly polished words to run alongside the paper’s leader column. It was accompanied by a strap-line declaring: “In this devastating denunciation, the man who edited the staunchly Labour Daily Mirror for 10 years reveals why he feels so betrayed by the party he loved.”
In fact, the “devastating denunciation” directed by Molloy at “new” Labour is pretty impressive, –and some of it might have been lifted from my previous column. Taken as a whole, it might amount to a persuasive case (although it doesn’t persuade me) for not voting Labour next time round. Indeed, I have many friends who have allowed their membership of the Labour Party to lapse, and a number who have told me they won’t be voting Labour again.
However, not voting Labour is one thing – some of my defecting friends cheerfully justify voting Liberal Democrat or Green. But voting Tory is another thing entirely and Molloy does not even try to explain how he made that huge leap from a lifelong position on the progressive wing of politics to active support for the party of wealth and privilege.
But if he offers no overt explanation, there is a hint at his real motive. After a slightly pompous passage in which he declares that it is “a measure of our civilisation as to how compassionately we respond to those in our society who need help,” he goes on to suggest that “the liberal establishment” blames the middle classes for inequality and seeks to punish them with “ever higher taxes”.
Compassion or no compassion, I think that means Mike Molloy doesn’t like paying his taxes. And if you don’t like paying your taxes, there is only one party to vote for, isn’t there?
Molloy rounds off this section of his argument with the following sentence: “The truth is that Old Labour principles of fairness and equality and support for the working classes seem to have evaporated under this Government.” While there may be a smidgen of truth in this, the point seems strangely inappropriate to the case he has just made. Does he really think that a government of wealthy Bullingdon Club members will better serve the principles of fairness and equality and support for the working classes?
I hope old John Molloy, Mike’s dad, hurries back from the other side to put his foolish boy right about that. But he will be a bit late – the 69-year-old lad has already publicly endorsed his local Tory candidate in Ealing. Yuck.
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I found Tony Blair’s appearance at the Chilcot enquiry scary. His 58 mentions of Iran when he was supposed to be talking about Iraq left little doubt that he would be up for a spot of regime change in Teheran, were he still in Number 10
The frightening thing is that, in his role as Middle East “peacemaker”, he probably knows a lot that we don’t know about American-Israeli intentions in the Gulf. Let’s hope Barack Obama and Gordon Brown aren’t as gung ho as George W Bush and Blair were.
