Joe Dromey, a red prince of the Labour aristocracy, stands accused of using his mother’s position as Shadow Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport to try to threaten a national newspaper. Crowing about a minor clarification that he had won on the back of reporting the Mail to the PCC, Harriet Harman’s son Joe insisted that the complaint was solely his and he “used the PCC, as anyone else can”. He later confessed that he had CC’d his mother in an email to the newspaper. Given her sensitive role around the implementation of the Leveson recommendations and the setting up of a new media regulator, Guido will let you draw your own conclusions on whether this was in anyway appropriate conduct for any politician’s child, let alone one that told comrades that he aspires to be an MP himself one day. Running to mummy is one thing, running to mummy the shadow media regulator is quite another…

@MrHarryCole she did not. You're interrupting the cricket on my day off!

— Joe Dromey (@Joe_Dromey) August 2, 2013

Dromey Jr is claiming that he did not have his mother’s permission to CC her in his email to the newspaper, though he is asking us to take him at his word on that one. Once again we have politicians, albeit in this case a wannabe one, throwing their weight around in an attempt to bully the media. Joe is right when he says anyone can go to the PCC, only a red prince however can use his mother’s prominence in public life as a stick to try and beat away scrutiny. If Harriet Harman didn’t give permission for her son to use her name in his complaint, what action did she take when she saw that she had been CC’d in the email?