Yesterday, Prince Harry, Elton John and the other co-plaintiffs lost their civil case against the Daily Mail/ANL. The judge on the case used to be a lawyer who represented the British tabloids in court, if you can believe that. Like, when he was a lawyer, Justice Matthew Nicklin LOST a lawsuit brought by Prince Harry just three years ago. So this is very obvious payback. But to the Daily Mail’s editor-in-chief Paul Dacre, it’s a moment to reveal to the world that he gets high on his own supply. Dacre, who is 77 years old, has something resembling royalist-psychosis. His statement following the Daily Mail’s questionable legal victory was so unhinged that very few outlets are quoting more than a handful of sentences. Here’s Dacre’s statement in full:
Four years ago, lawyers for Prince Harry, Doreen Lawrence and Elton John accused the Mail, in a blaze of publicity, of placing bugs in homes, cars, cafés and landline phones. We described these charges – some related to stories that were over 30 years old – as “lurid and preposterous”. Today, in what was a momentous victory for the Mail, the High Court dismissed every single one of the 97 claims.
That is an OVERWHELMING vindication of our journalism.
The Mail’s famous front-page naming five thugs as Stephen Lawrence’s “MURDERERS”, could have seen me jailed for contempt of court. Instead, it triggered the McPherson Inquiry and the eventual jailing of two of the killers. Stephen’s father, Neville, says he owes the Mail everything. Why Baroness Lawrence – for whom we have always had profound respect and sympathy – chose to turn on both the paper, and the brilliant reporter who campaigned for justice for her son for over two decades, is something I will never be able to comprehend.
Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity. There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin.
Poor Harry. I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case. The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the Mail. We were her paper. We took her side in her acrimonious break up with Charles. She and I would speak and meet. The Mail’s superb royal reporter was her friend and confidante.
The truth is that this trumped-up action – which has cost well over £50million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time – should never have been brought to trial. That it did, raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession.
Today’s verdict is not just a victory for Associated’s magnificent journalists – several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives – but a free press generally. Make no mistake. This was a conspiracy, supported by Hacked Off, to destroy a paper.
Financed by the orgy-loving, racist Max Mosley and involving the actor Hugh Grant, it was also a sinister bid to resuscitate Leveson Two and impose statutory regulation on the press which, even now, is rearing its ugly head in Labour’s Media Green Paper.
Some of the allegations made by Harry’s lawyers against the Mail involved Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein. They were rejected by the Court. But remember it was the power of the Mail’s journalism that, not once, but twice, resulted in Mandelson being sacked as a minister. And it was the Mail on Sunday’s exclusive picture of Prince Andrew, with his arm around 17 year old Virginia Guiffre in Ghislaine Maxwell’s home, that, ultimately, resulted in justice for Epstein’s underage victims.
Such justice only happened, as with Stephen Lawrence, because of the actions of a free press.
[Statement via The Royalist Substack]
The mention of Diana will undoubtedly infuriate Harry, but I hope he doesn’t take the obvious bait. Dacre shows his hand over and over – this wasn’t merely about the massive coverup around the Mail’s decades of dirty deeds, it was about trying to stop Leveson 2, another huge reckoning for the British media. Speaking of Hacked Off, they released a statement as well:
Today’s judgment finds that, in respect of the small number of articles which formed the basis of claims against the Mail’s publisher ANL, the claimants had not done enough to prove that unlawful means were relied upon to source the stories. The fact that the articles were deeply intrusive, and in some cases sexist and homophobic, was not in dispute in the case.
Commenting, Hacked Off Board Director and victim of phone hacking Jacqui Hames said,
“The stories and conduct which formed the basis for the claims against the Mail were devastatingly intrusive, and included medical details, information about children, and other deeply invasive behaviour and coverage.
“The Mail’s conduct fell well short of professional standards in the press, yet nothing has changed in the last twenty years and news publishers like the Mail still remain outside any independent form of regulation. Action to address standards in the press is long overdue, and must be a priority for the incoming administration.
“The courts are not the appropriate vehicle for investigating the allegations of wrongdoing against the Mail in their fulness, and the judgment was clear in stating that, focusing on a handful of individual articles, the Court had not made findings on whether illegality was widespread at the Mail. Now only a public inquiry can get to the bottom of what really happened. Leveson Part Two must proceed without further delay.”
Yeah, British people are going to be waiting a lot longer for Leveson 2. This judgment has done irreparable damage to media-watchdogging and to citizens who simply do not want their lives torn apart by an invasive, racist, sexist and criminal tabloid media.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
