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The Harriet Harman Daily Mail feud is classic Fleet Street – her only option now is to go on the attack

By Chris Boffey

February 27, 2014 | 5 min read

Chris Boffey, a former Fleet Street news editor and onetime special adviser to the Labour government, explains how the Daily Mail's claims about Harriet Harman snowballed into a mass media frenzy.

Harriet Harman

The floodgates opened on Harriet Harman and her links to the Paedophile Information Exchange on Sunday when the Daily Mail’s stories about her and husband Jack Dromey and former cabinet minister Patricia Hewitt were legitimised by the Observer.

In her column Barbara Ellen, under the headline “Labour trio can’t stay silent on this paedophile claim”, said: “So, while this should not turn into a witch-hunt, it does not matter that it was a long time ago (the pros and cons of "historical" issues have been amply covered with Savile, among other issues). Likewise, while the Labour trio should not be branded 'paedophile apologists' on the strength of an old story, it would also be a grave mistake for them to stay silent or curtly dismissive, perhaps hoping that the claims will magically disappear. (Dream on.)”

Up until then it was just a Daily Mail story, a tarted up bit of history; no one seriously believed that these politicians, when at the National Council for Civil Liberties, actually canvassed, consorted or believed in the life of PIE. Miss Ellen made it open season.

But if the Observer, the guardian of civil liberties, is allowing a respected columnist to lead on Harman et al then it must be more than just another Daily Mail rant at Labour.

The Mail latched on immediately telling their readers that even the left were demanding answers.

Up until the Ellen intervention “the Labour trio” (at least the Observer did not use “threesome”) had employed what is loosely called the Alastair Campbell strategy on Mail stories: don’t deign to get involved, don’t give them credence and ignore them until it goes away.

What happened next was classic Fleet Street. Everyone piled in. It was just too good not to. The pressure was on Harman and she sought the bolt hole of Newsnight where she could give her side of the story and make her own attack on the Mail and its use of titillating pictures involving young girls.

Now the rest of the media’s columnists got in on the act – always better to have a home story to comment on rather than Ukraine or Syria – and the Today programme brought in talking heads to discuss the virtues of making an apology.

The story is no longer about Harman but how the Labour Party is dealing with it. Dan Hodges of the Daily Telegraph, a rising star in the blogging world, has dissected what he calls the Labour playbook and is convinced that the next step is the blame game and a call for heads to roll in the party’s communications team .

I am not so sure. Owen Jones, who writes in the Independent, has picked up on Harman’s demonisation of the Mail and started an online petition calling on the paper to stop sexualising children. Already there are 30,000 signatures and there are enough people out there who dislike the Mail to make it run a bit longer.

Harman must now go on the attack. It is too late to make an apology even if she wanted to. I wonder if she has researchers looking at the Daily Mail’s historic positions on the rights of women, fair pay, homosexuality, equal rights. Her plan must be to make this a clash between the Labour Party and the Mail. Refer to the row between the paper and Ed Miliband over the way it described his father. Place an article in the Guardian or the Times.

Barbara Ellen concluded her helpful article on Sunday: “There is still space here for Hewitt, Harman and Dromey to 'grab the conch', as it were, to calmly tell their version of events, in context, explaining exactly what happened at the NCCL, and, where applicable, expressing regret. A calm, thorough, intelligent response is required to cut through the smokescreen of mischief and hysteria; they should answer the myriad important questions and issues arising from that time.”

Yes, but she should still be going for the Mail jugular.

Meanwhile, Patricia Hewitt is still pursuing the Campbell strategy and so far has not uttered a word. It is said that she is abroad, not really an excuse in our digital world. Maybe the Mail could discover her slapping on the sunscreen on an Australian beach, she was born in Canberra, and run a headline “Sun and sand pies but no apology.”

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