Sir Alan Duncan's Diaries (pt 1)Boris Johnson - A Clown

Interesting that the diaries are in the Daily Mail. Does this mean they no longer support Boris Johnson I wonder.

I was wondering that. This extract was published in the Mail on Friday but no one has mentioned the diaries on here.

He’s not a patch on Alan Clarke is he!

So, he didn’t like Boris then??

Pantglas... now you’re talking! Alan Clarke ?? his life was certainly ‘interesting’ wasn’t it?

Alan Clarke. Another serial sh*gger as I recall...

Classy lot, those tories...

I agree MaizieD but his diaries really were well written, witty and entertaining (the apple didn’t fall far from the tree) whereas Duncan’s seem petty and stodgy!

The one thing these diaries have revealed is what a nasty piece of work Alan Duncan is.

Do you think he deliberately wrote his diaries with publication in mind? I am sure all this concentrated nastiness is earning him a big load of dosh.

Some posters surprise that the DM would publish diaries as excoriating as it is about Conservative MPs just shows how little those who continually slag the DM off actually read the paper or know anything about it.

It is nearly 3 years since that extreme right winger Paul Dacre ceased editing the Mail and since he left the current editor has moved the paper significantly towards the political centre and has been at times quite critical of the Conservative government.

Still hating the Daily Mail is a great trope for the left to rally round and they are certainly not going to let the fact that the DM is no longer what they liked to think it was, get in their way

Goodness, you do sound indignant, MOnica.

They're ALL nasty pieces of work, from the PM downwards. I'm sure you don't need a rehearsal of their individual nastinesses. Duncan is just one among many.

And who, on this thread, has said anything about 'hating the Daily Mail'?

MaizieD It's often surprising how people read things that haven't been written.

Well he's got to do something to make a crust hasn't he.

I'm sure Sir Alan would have hoped to have his nose in the EU trough by now. All those lovely expenses he's missing out on. Sour grapes maybe.

I'm slightly bewildered why extracts from a diary are acceptable in the Guardian but not from the Mail.

Dinahmo MaizieD, Threads are not isolated and we know how nasty left leaning people can be about Daily Mail readers from other postings so please don't be so disingenuous.

Where I live now the locals would say that MOnica was 'working herself* in her post... ?

Not remotely indignant, just deeply cynical.

I read the Daily Mail and at the moment the i. In the past I have read the Times, Guardian, Daily Telegraph. I read The Independent from Day 1 until its demise.

DH beleives strongly that one should always read at least one newspaper you profoundly disagree with. So we do.

Oscar Wilde said, of diaries^“One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” I quite agree - and a newspaper fills this role as well as any.

We lived in Alan Duncan's constituency he was famous for never visiting - well only the posh part.

For those who are so vehemently anti Tory and don't believe a word any of them say, why would you believe a word that Alan Duncan says?
And reproduce them with such glee?

I did not vote Tory btw, confidently predicted on GN that Boris would never become PM and am not partisan.

Just

I'm slightly bewildered why extracts from a diary are acceptable in the Guardian but not from the Mail.

kittylester
Somewhere in between The Mail and The Guardian, sensationalist lies transformed themselves into reliable truths!
???

kittylester

I'm slightly bewildered why extracts from a diary are acceptable in the Guardian but not from the Mail.

Dinahmo MaizieD, Threads are not isolated and we know how nasty left leaning people can be about Daily Mail readers from other postings so please don't be so disingenuous.

I have been critical of the DM in the past and no doubt will be again in the future. However, in this instance, my quote is from the Guardian, who printed the extracts from the diaries serialised in the DM. Since I rarely read the DM, quoting the Guardian seems to be the next best thing - for all those who don't read either the Guardian or the DM.

I read the Daily Mail, as I often admit and I have never ever voted for the Conservatives, or Labour for that matter.

At one point I enjoyed reading the Guardian, but in recent years it has become so sanctimonious and humourless. Even its cartoon strips are so heavily laden with leftwing right-on-ness, they could hold their heads up high on any student newspaper.

Give me the unpolotical, just plain amusing( most of the time) cartoons in the DM any day.

MOnica That is an interesting post of yours about the change in the editorship and the different political position of the Daily Mail in recent years. I was surprised to see these diaries being published in the Daily Mail, and wondered, as I said, whether they were not particularly supportive of Boris Johnson. I don't read the Daily Mail (apart from Liz Jones Diary) so didn't realise they have changed their political position. I do think though, that your post would have been just as interesting if it had been a little less aggressive towards left wing people.

Will this trigger MOnica?

Geordie Greg has been DM editor for about 2 years.

www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jun/07/new-daily-mail-editor-to-be-geordie-greig

Irrespective of the petty comments about who does or doesn't admit to reading the dreaded DM, and all those trying to kill the messenger with comments about Alan Duncan, the point remains that he considers Johnson unfit for office, and he is not the only one. Before he managed to fool people and get selected, Johnson's previous employers and colleagues were queueing up to tell everyone just how unsuitable he was. I have said this before, but this man's unsuitability is not a political issue for me, I would be just as concerned were he a Labour PM. He is a complete moral vacuum, a liar, a fraud, a cheat and lazy and I am seriously concerned about the number of people who are prepared to overlook his very obvious faults just because he spouts their political beliefs. It totally baffles me.

I have no idea who the editor of the DM is, even though I read it most days. I do know that the previous one was Paul Dacre and the paper improved after he left.

I recently read a review of the 42 Prime Ministers this country has had. unherd.com/2021/04/prime-ministers-dont-need-to-be-virtuous/ Almost all those considered the most successfull were deeply flawed from Churchill, Lloyd-George, Disraeli, Palmerston, to name but a few.

Those of impeccable probity like George Brown or Sir Alec Douglas Home seem to disappear without trace

As I recall, George Brown was never PM, but was a Foreign Secretary with a penchant for being 'tired and emotional'.

Do you mean Gordon Brown, MOnica?

And I hope that you are in no way equating Johnson with the PMs you mentioned. I would not consider him to be 'successful' if it means leading the country with any degree of competence.

The following s taken from a piece in The Critic, publish May 2020 with Jim Hacker's views on the different types of newspaper readers

"Yet events happen with frightening speed, and the media have sometimes struggled to keep up with developments in a satisfying or authoritative fashion. For decades, the print newspaper was the main way in which the average Englishman read his news, and his choice of which paper to read influenced his politics and worldview. As Jim Hacker put it in Yes, Prime Minister, “The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; the Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.” When asked by Sir Humphrey about the role that the Sun plays, the PM’s private secretary Bernard responds “Sun readers don’t care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits" "