What can we do about the Daily Mail?

Use this letter, amended as necessary.

Your MP
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA

I am writing to express my deep disgust and anger at the Daily Mail’s foul attack on the dead war veteran, Ralph Miliband. My frustration is compounded by the fact that in the 1930s the Daily Mail supported Fascism and Molseley’s blackshirts. I have also seen a Mail article of that time complaining of “German Jews” entering the UK to flee fascism.



This is not a partisan comment. I am not and have never been a Marxist or a Communist. I do not even call myself a socialist, as that word carries so much ill-defined emotional baggage. I do not support the Labour Party, nor do I think that Ed Miliband is a good political leader. But the attack on Ralph Miliband is an intolerable lowering of the standard of political debate in Britain, and if it is allowed to go unpunished, the standard of debate (which you must agree is not great in any case) will continue to sink until discussion becomes abuse, and abuse turns into violence.



I hope that you share my sense of outrage, and that you will be able to find some way in which Parliament can bring some sort of curb on the Mail’s unethical excesses.



Please do not point me in the direction of the Press Complaints Commission. They are not fit for purpose, as I found out recently when I made a complaint against an inaccurate, distorted, and misinformative article in the Mail on Sunday. http://bit.ly/1az1qbs



Please find out what scope Parliament has to force the Mail to regret its abuse of press freedom. I would suggest that an appropriate punishment would be that Lord Dacre should lose his chairmanship of the Editors’ Code of Practice Committee.

Do you agree? And will you make efforts to bring this about?



Thank you


Sincerely

If writing to MPs ios not your thing, consider hiding the Mail on the newsstands under the Guardian. They'll never think of looking there)