Will the sleaze row scupper Paul Dacre’s chances of becoming Ofcom boss?

Being found ‘not appointable’ in May has not killed off the former ’Daily Mail’ editor’s hopes of slipping into the top role at the media regulator. Perhaps renewed efforts to block him will, writes Sean O’Grady

The prospect of Paul Dacre in charge at the media regulator will have the BBC quaking (Getty)

The law of unintended consequences makes its presence known in, well, unexpected ways. One, for example may prove to be shoe-horning the rebarbative figure of ex-Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre into the chair of Ofcom, the media regulator. Put bluntly, while the government was quietly working hard to construct a uniquely Dacre-shaped vacancy at Ofcom, and a Dacre-friendly mechanism to get him into it, without that much media or political attention, the whole process will now, after the botched plan to rescue Owen Paterson from his own stupidity, be subjected to the most intense scrutiny by all concerned.

Before, it was probably odds-on that, somehow, Dacre would be appointed to prosecute a war on “wokery” at the BBC (ie “challenging” its supposedly complacent, biased ways and “metropolitan elite” culture); now he will probably have to withstand a tumult of abuse and criticism, and a concerted attempt to block him. It’s not corruption, any of this, but it is more what John Major called “the whiff of ‘we are the masters now’”. Oliver Dowden, lately culture secretary (and who didn’t manage to get Dacre into the role) and now Tory chairman, says that it isn’t corrupt because if it was then Dacre would be in the job already. True enough, but we may not have to wait long for another go.

Dacre has, after all been interviewed for the post once already, in May, and was found to be “not appointable”. Reading between the lines, the job description wasn’t broad enough to give Dacre the kind of power of discretion he’s been used to for most of his journalistic career – in other words he couldn’t really do what he wanted to do, so the failure of that application was maybe more a matter of mutual consent than it seemed.

Since then, there have been developments, and things have happened worthy of Yes Minister or The Thick of It political satire: “You couldn’t make it up,” as one of Dacre’s star columnists likes to say. First, there has been an injection of friendlier, or less hostile, personalities into the selection process. These include Michael Prescott, a lobbyist, and Michael Simmonds, a PR consultant, who is married to Nick Gibb, a longstanding Tory minister until recently, and thus brother-in-law to Sir Robbie Gibb, former press secretary to Theresa May, chief of staff to Michael Portillo and on the BBC board. Robbie Gibb and Simmonds (and the author of this article, I should declare) worked together at the BBC, and they also know Douglas “Dougie” Smith, husband of the director of the No 10 Policy Unit, Munira Mirza. It would be unfair to describe such a network of acquaintances and friends as a cabal, but it’s also fair to note that they are all pretty committed Tories, with a pronounced Eurosceptic point of view. Gibb, a bright, thoughtful and engaging figure as it happens, knows and understands a great deal more about journalism than his critics give him credit for; but he is also known as a practical man of the world who likes to get things done, and has a taste for bureaucratic politics. Anyway, none of them think Dacre the devil incarnate, as many do, and are unlikely to think this senior journalist with decades of high-level experience behind him is “not appointable”.

Second, the process having failed the first time round, the job description has been loosened up, and is unmistakeably more Dacreish – less of a lofty titular chair and more of someone at the top, more in charge and determined to shake things up. Gone, for example, is the requirement to work “collegiately” with other board members, or “support” the chief executive of Ofcom, and to know lots about regulation (yawn). Instead we have the Dacreish virtues of “challenging” the Ofcom team, an experience not always entirely convivial as many a Mail hack subjected to Dacre’s foul-mouthed “vagina monologues” would attest. A famously shy figure, the Ofcom chair is no longer to be “the most senior representative and ambassador of Ofcom”. Answering tiresome media enquiries or going on The Andrew Marr Show will be for someone else to do, not Dacre, which is probably for the best for all concerned, but will not enhance transparency.

As with other recent senior appointments at the BBC, though notably not Jess Brammar, the new executive editor, the new Ofcom chair will be asking difficult questions about what the BBC thinks its journalism should be about, and whether it is simply a matter of, in effect, attacking policies from the progressive left, as a kind of crusade for social justice. If appointed, Dacre will ask if its priorities, its “news values”, are well enough aligned to those of the licence-fee payers rather than the London-based lefty liberal elite. Those “Middle England” values, Dacre and his allies might conclude, are closer to the Mail and GB News than, say, Newsnight or the Radio 4 Today programme. Should there have been more coverage of the migrant Channel crisis? Some more sceptical voices about the climate emergency in the extensive Cop26 coverage? Too much on the Downing Street flat, and not enough on the successes of Brexit, such as the vaccine programme? Not enough balance and diversity of opinion generally? Should we hear more from, say, Richard Tice and less from Andy Burnham?

In any case, there’s trouble ahead, thanks to this growing, and damaging, public image of the government bending and remaking the rulebook for its own benefit. The chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Julian Knight, has already questioned why the interviews are being run again, and the likes of Ed Vaizey, an eminently qualified former Tory culture minister reportedly turned down for the post, might well question the probity of running the process again and again until the government gets the right answer from a supposedly independent and impartial selection procedure. After all, this is not a corrupt country.