The Mail’s deputy political editor Tobyn Andreae has told the BBC’s Media Show podcast that the paper wouldn’t re-run their infamous “enemies of the people” headline today, implying it was a mistake they’d try avoiding nowadays:

“I suspect not every editor makes their own judgments. And of course, it’s always great to be wise with hindsight; would Paul Dacre use the same headline again? I can’t speak for him. He was a tremendously gifted editor from whom I learned an awful lot. But it’s a fast paced newsroom. Sometimes mistakes do get made. I can’t promise they won’t ever get made again.”

Andreae defended “kicking down as well as punching up”, for example going after benefit cheats, and it being as fair game as the Matt Hancock scoop, though saying they’re in a different category and the paper would “balance that out in the way those stories are presented”.

Sun editor-in-chief Victoria Newton was also asked whether the paper’s “not averse to a bit of kicking down”, she parried:

“I’m not sure that’s entirely fair. I mean, I think I edit the paper in a different way to perhaps some of my predecessors. I make it my conscious decision to work with people on stories a lot of the time. And, you know I have brilliant relationships with many celebrities and their agents.”

Guido wonders what James Slack, the former Daily Mail hack whose byline was on the ‘Enemies of the People’ splash, would think of this discussion now he’s been poached by The Sun as their new deputy editor-in-chief…