Why should Tom Watson be given a peerage and not Paul Dacre?

Much of this is not Liz Truss’s fault. The great big adjustment all over the West is that the era of low interest rates is now over. This is causing a crisis because most people, businesses and governments – and, we now discover, most pension funds – planned their finances on the basis that the era would go on for ever. It was bad luck that this hit markets just as Britain got its new prime minister. However, the Trussties undoubtedly overreached. Having been caught out, they are forced to become the sober-sides they previously mocked. Having been punished for peremptorily sacking Tom Scholar at the Treasury, they have had to back off Antonia Romeo as his successor, because she has no Treasury experience, and put in the dependable James Bowler who was at Alistair Darling’s side when Northern Rock collapsed; and so on. This is a government of marketeers, flummoxed by markets seeking orthodoxy.

It sounded like an exciting game of Consequences. The Duke of Sussex, Lady Lawrence (mother of Stephen), Sir Elton John, Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost said they will take the Daily Mail to court for alleged phone hacking. The leading lawyers in the case, Hamlins, put out a press release accusing Associated Newspapers, the Mail’s publishers, of grave crimes and wrongs, but no legal papers have been filed. This is rather unusual. Why the rush over these historical claims? The answer lies in another press release, issued by Hacked Off, the group backed by the late Max Mosley. It announced the same news and added that ‘If phone hacking did occur at Mail titles, and Paul Dacre [the Mail editor-in-chief] is found to have been aware of it, he would have knowingly misled the Leveson Inquiry under oath. Any plans to give him a seat in the House of Lords should be suspended until the conclusion of these claims and any subsequent investigations.’ Since any legal action would take several years, compliance with Hacked Off’s ‘ifs’ would end Dacre’s prospect of ermine, held out by Boris Johnson’s imminent resignation honours. I do not know, of course, whether the accusations are true, but I don’t think it is a brilliant idea that legal threats made by rich people (Lady Lawrence being the only non-rich person in the group) should automatically kibosh public appointments or honours. It makes me wonder whether these accusations are serious, or just examples of the depressing 21st-century passion for ‘lawfare’. As country neighbours of the legendary Mail hard man, where many villeins owe their livelihoods to Dacre’s acres, we are waiting to wassail madly when he is justly rewarded by a peerage. We scorn envious attempts to pull him down.

For similar reasons, I am suspicious of the claims that Conor Burns, the Conservative minister, did something very wicked in a bar at the Conservative conference in Birmingham last week – although, again, I know nothing of the facts. Like most modern cowardly institutions, the Conservative party has removed the whip from him merely because he has been accused. Once again, the motive against him is clear: he is reported to be in line for a knighthood in Boris’s departing list.

Meanwhile, a peerage seems to be going ahead for Tom Watson, the former deputy leader of the Labour party. Yet it was Watson who gave huge impetus to this foul habit of destroying the reputation of others by unproved – and, in his case, provably false – accusations. This Senator McCarthy of paedophilia abused the Chamber of the House of Commons to lay his accusations, which included, he said, ‘clear intelligence’ of a Westminster paedophile network. Watson’s office accepted £540,000 from Max Mosley. He gave credence to the claims of the fantasist Carl Beech, who traduced several innocent people, including Sir Edward Heath, Lords Brittan and Janner and Field Marshal Lord Bramall and Harvey Proctor, who is still alive. Out of cowardice, Theresa May set up the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in response to Watson’s claims. IICSA has since stigmatised people against whom there is no proper evidence. One such was the great Bishop George Bell, even though the Anglican hierarchy belatedly acknowledged he had been wronged. As a beneficiary of patronage myself, I agree that it takes all sorts to make the House of Lords, but there are limits, and Tom Watson is beyond them.

There is a short, funny book to be written about Elton John and media law cases. In this paper in December 1988, Auberon Waugh wrote a brilliant column about the fact that the Sun had just announced its agreement to pay £1 million [twice the previous record for damages] to John for a libellous and untrue report about ‘homosexual activity with a minor and drug-taking’. The Sun announced its agreement to pay in an enormous front-page apology which began ‘Sorry Elton’ and included remarks by the star that ‘Life is too short to bear grudges and I don’t bear the Sun any malice.’ Bron Waugh wrote that he had ‘decided not to believe that the Sun had paid Elton John £1 million, as I believe it is my inalienable right to do’, and quoted the judge in the case, who complained that his court has been used as ‘a supine adjunct to a publicity machine for pop stars and newspapers’. Plus ça change.

Goodness it is dim to take the new King’s Latin name off the coinage. A far less educated age could manage Carolus in the 17th century (or Georgius in the 20th). The change is to make the coins more ‘accessible’, but where is the logic? The more complicated bit – ‘D.G.Rex.F.D.’ – remains in Latin. Don’t the makers of the Mint remember from their own childhoods that not knowing something can be a spur to learning? Can’t they see that every coin contains a succinct history lesson?