Mail Shot

Although Peter Oborne is now at the Telegraph, and although Tim Stanley has never been anywhere else, the Mail titles have been going paleocon for years, with Peter McKay, Andrew Alexander, Stephen Glover, Peter Hitchens, Alex Brummer and others, regular and occasional.

The Mail on Sunday, in particular, is this country's pre-eminent paleoconservative vehicle, with even John Laughland and Mark Almond writing for it from time to time. RightMinds features Thomas Fleming, no less.

But despite the strong correspondence of the foreign policy views of so many of its writers to those of Ed Miliband, the Mail has been determined to go after him.

Broadly, it agrees with Miliband about international, if about few national, affairs. Even broadly, it agrees with Cameron or Clegg about nothing. Yet it insists on picking fights with Miliband.

That was what made the Daily Mail the only national newspaper, perhaps even including the Mail on Sunday, that could have run the Harriet Harman, Patricia Hewitt, Paedophile Information Exchange story on its front page for days and seen Harman still in post nearly a fortnight later.

Never giving in to the Daily Mail has become a point of honour.

Harman's card has been marked, so that she will be made to go over who-the-hell-cares-what the moment that who-the-hell-cares-what presents itself.

But for her ongoing Deputy Leadership of the party that is still easily on course to win the next General Election, the Mail has only itself to blame.