Are Paul Dacre and Lady Rothermere, the wife of Mail owner Jonathan, really at loggerheads over the EU? They are – if Tory oracle and former Telegraph editor Charles Moore is to be believed.
In a note for the Spectator this week, Moore suggests that the editor-in-chief’s views on EU membership – or rather “his bellowings of Eurosceptic rage” – are not shared by the wife of the boss.
Calling the long-serving Mail editor-in-chief a demi-devil and poor credulous monster (or rather “Caliban”, the character Shakespeare also called “a freckled whelp hag-born”) the Thatcher biographer goes on to praise the Miranda-like Claudia Rothermere.
The Shakespearean, not BBC1 Miranda obviously. With her “beauty, brains and fine horsemanship” Rothermere “does everything in her power to improve our civilisation” and now “feels sorry for the readers who don’t agree with Paul”.
She “worries about confusing fervent personal beliefs with the future of a great newspaper”, frets Moore.
“What agony this must be for all those who seek advancement in Associated Newspapers as they wonder whether to come down on the side of Caliban or Miranda,” concludes Moore.
Hope is at hand. “Luckily, Associated, like the United Kingdom, is presided over by a much-loved constitutional monarch, and great faith is placed in the judgment of good King Jonathan.”
Mail executives will have little time to wonder what Dacre could have done to provoke Charles Moore so many years after their editing rivalry came to an end. Dacre’s fury is bound to cause Tempest-like conditions in the office.
