Why the shrill and virulent tone?

Attacks on the Speaker of the House of Commons by the Brexit-supporting press are disgraceful, writes Raymond Snoddy – and there is only one explanation as to why they are being made

As a former editor of The Sun and long term resident of what once was Fleet Street, David Yelland has a good historic feel for the art of monstering individuals in the popular press.

He could have chosen the bucket of shit poured over John Major, or the England football manager Graham Turner who was turned into a turnip because his team was beaten by the Swedes.

Then more recently we have the judges of the Supreme Court designated Enemies of the People and the motives, beliefs and past behaviour of their nearest and dearest racked over and exposed.

“The Speaker getting one of the biggest kickings in Fleet Street history tonight. But it is these papers that created this mess, not him. They misled readers and led them to disaster,” Yelland believes.

And in another telling tweet, the former Sun editor praises the “lovely” current Sun political editor Tom Newton Dunn for talking such sense on Newsnight before adding a sting in the tail.

“I want him to be asked to explain why the paper misled its readers on the EU and has been occupied by an ERG Junta. The Sun and other papers are complicit in this mess not innocent bystanders,” Yelland argues.

Alas, the question was never put.

But Yelland is right to point out that the Speaker John Bercow has received one of the biggest kickings in Fleet Street history and one that is still continuing.

BOLLOCKS TO BERCOW trumpeted The Sun though its peculiar warped sensibilities meant that two of the letters in bollocks had to be obscured to make the headline read – B*LL*CKS.

Even the sign in the back of Mrs Bercow’s car – Bollocks to Brexit – apparently had to be mutilated to avoid offending sensitive Sun readers.[advert position=”left”]

There was no sensitivity in the paper’s attack on the “smug” bullying Speaker who was single-handedly trying to derail Brexit by preventing Prime Minister May bringing exactly the same motion before the House of Commons for a second vote.

Naturally unflattering pictures of Speaker Bercow were chosen to illustrate the editorial theme.

The Sun did score one hit when it stuck to journalism rather than abuse and pointed out that on January 9th the Speaker had said: “I am not in the business of invoking precedent, nor am I under any obligation to do so.”

And of course on March 18 Bercow famously said: “This convention is very strong and of long standing, dating back to 2 April 1604.”

For the Daily Express Bercow is simply The Brexit Destroyer.

Over at the Daily Mail something strange is happening – or at least happening to the person of its editor Geordie Greig. He is slowly morphing into the paper’s former Enemies of the People editor Paul Dacre.

For a while Greig, who used to edit the Remain supporting Mail on Sunday, offered a relatively “civilised” version of Brexit which contented itself with slavish support for every twist and turn of the Prime Minister’s corkscrew policy making. But little really red meat was on offer to its Brexit-supporting readers.

Now the dogs have been let loose again with the paper spitting with fury as the “grandstanding Speaker ambushes PM with bombshell ruling on her deal.”

A picture is taken of Speaker smirking taken at some stage during the afternoon and is then used to justify a hopelessly biased inflammatory headline: “Smirk that says: Brexit Be Damned.”

Of course neither the “smirk” nor the actual ruling said any such thing.

The evidence that something has changed at the temporarily civilised Daily Mail increased as it lashed out again on the second day – marking “1,000 Wasted Days” since the referendum with attacks on incompetent MP’s and hard Brexit zealots who were making the UK an international laughing stock.

Then there was further monstering of Bercow by digging into his controversial distant past as an ardent right-winger who argued for a programme of repatriation of black Britons and argued that gay literature was “sinister and evil.”

In fact Speaker Bercow in his ruling was simply quoting Erskine May, the bible of Parliamentary procedure which stipulates that the same motion can not be brought back again unchanged in the same Parliamentary session.

It caused little surprise among senior MPs with a knowledge of how the House of Commons works, and has always worked.

Speaker Bercow was doing his job, exercising his judgement as he is supposed to do.

But there is a much more serious point about the importance of the office of Speaker, someone who is appointed to be above the political fray, and who has expert legal advice to inform his rulings.

As such, it is an office that deserves respect, particularly when the rulings are inconvenient or controversial, rather in fact in the way that the judges of the Supreme Court deserve respect because of the roles they occupy. Or at the very least they deserve not to be vilified for doing their jobs.

In that light the nature of the attacks on the Speaker of the House of Commons by the Brexit-supporting press are disgraceful.

Why is this happening now and with such virulence?

There really is only one explanation. The Brexit press sees that everything they campaigned for, and twisted the news for, over precisely 1,000 days could be lost and come to nothing.

Expect the tone to become ever more shrill over the coming days, if that is possible.

The Sun has now turned on Theresa May and accuses her of lacking the guts to go for No Deal “as half the country wants.”

The paper suggests that the only way of avoiding either a super soft Brexit or no Brexit at all is to override “the appalling Speaker Bercow” and approve the PM’s deal at its third airing.

The Daily Mail, despite the bluster and abuse of recent days, is markedly more pessimistic. If the Prime Minister does manage to wrangle a third vote Brexiteer MP’s will have to make up their minds what they really want – the May deal or seeing it diluted or consigned to the dustbin of history.

“If it is the latter 1,000 days – and 1,000 potential opportunities – will have been shamefully wasted. How did victory turn to this?” asks the Mail in a full-page comment.

Many will relish the sight of the Brexit press in bemused retreat but will still want an answer to the Yelland question: How come such papers so misled their readers and so became complicit in the unholy mess that has now resulted and remains unresolved?