Yesterday was a tough today for the hardline centrist hacks who rushed to Huw Edwards’ defence after allegations he paid a child for indecent images surfaced. As the Metropolitan Police confirmed BBC presenter Huw Edwards was charged with three accounts of making explicit photos, the lefty pundits look rather silly for slamming The Sun for surfacing the scandal and running to Huw’s defence. Guido has browsed through the archives of these supposed ‘hommes serieux’ who will be more than a little red-faced…

The questions for The Sun just got bigger still.

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) July 12, 2023

Former Editor of The Sun, David Yelland rushed to attack the paper, posting this a few hours after Huw’s wife named him as the presenter embroiled in scandal:

I wish @thehuwedwards well. The Sun inflicted terror on Huw despite no evidence of any criminal offence. This is no longer a BBC crisis, it is a crisis for the paper. Huw’s privacy must now be respected. Social media also needs speedy reform.

— David Yelland (@davidyelland) July 12, 2023

Emily Maitlis also blasted the “distasteful” BBC coverage of further allegations coming to light, questioning on The News Agents whether journalism had gone “too far” while “this poor man was in hospital, and that was absolutely appalling, and yet obviously there will be journalists here saying “but that doesn’t stop us doing our work”. Let’s not forget that the child’s mother initially approached the BBC to report the disturbing situation and she was met with silence…

Meanwhile, Jon Sopel was quick to wish Huw well:

This is an awful and shocking episode, where there was no criminality, but perhaps a complicated private life. That doesn’t feel very private now. I hope that will give some cause to reflect. They really need to. I wish ⁦@thehuwedwards⁩ well. pic.twitter.com/H3rN3bhE1U

— Jon Sopel (@jonsopel) July 12, 2023

Last but not least, Corbynite luvvie Owen Jones posted a moving defence that hasn’t aged well:

The Sun is a disgusting rag and they have to pay for what they’ve done to Huw Edwards.

They tried to destroy someone’s life with false claims of illegality involving a minor.

We know now there was no criminality, and The Sun have driven a vulnerable man into medical care.

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) July 12, 2023

They’re not leaping to his aid anymore…

Owen Jones hasn’t stopped producing groundbreaking journalistic output since announcing his new “Vote Against Labour” initiative. His latest piece in The Guardian yesterday argued for cuts to defence spending and scrapping Trident, using such high-grade arguments as: “It is true that Nato membership calls for arms spending of at least 2% of GDP, but in practice most states flout that.” That settles it, then…

Owen included damning final evidence in his polemic:

“As the House of Commons Defence Select Committee concluded: ‘The only way that Britain is ever likely to use Trident is to give legitimacy to a US nuclear attack by participating in it.’”

The only problem? Jones has misattributed the quote to the Committee as opposed to its actual author, which is Greenpeace, in one evidence session in 2006. The quote does in fact appear as the conclusion of the Defence Committee, though only on a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament leaflet. Judge a journalist by the quality of his sources…

Owen defended himself last night by blaming the error on his teeth: “I had dental surgery this week, which has left me a bit of a groggy mess…Basically I don’t have any wisdom teeth.” Hope he’s got BUPA…

Corbynite luvvie Owen Jones has made a shock announcement in The Guardian – naturally – that he has cancelled his membership to the Labour party after 24 years. Cue cries of Labour adopting Tory economics and their stance on Gaza “adding moral indecency to dishonest & vacuity.” So brave…

Guido’s sure Starmer will be gutted with the news that he’ll no longer have the hard-left commentator parroting questionable arguments on his side. Boy Jones has instead set up a new campaign called We Deserve Better to supposedly “send Labour a message”. Guido wonders if he’s actually been looking at the polls…

He may already have fallen at the first hurdle though. On the website, which calls on his comrades to cough up some cash, there’s no cookie policy and their disclaimer is invalid. Looking forward to a lawsuit from Jolyon…

Now then, me thinks the lady doth protest too much…

Yesterday afternoon, The Guardian asked for women in the UK to come forward and share their experiences of being “subjected to online misogyny”. Let’s take a look at how some of the 1,553 replies shaped up:

• “Does a pile on started by Owen Jones which ended with a man local to me developing a fixation on me & leaving me scared to leave the house count?” – Victoria Freeman
• “Owen Jones” – Julie Bindel
• “What, even when it involves your columnists?” – Emma Burnell
• “Well I cancelled my Guardian subscription because I was sick and tired of your biased reporting on gender ideology, which endangers women. Does that count?” – FletchFletchington
• “You removed JK Rowling from your list of celebrity birthdays because her support for women’s rights upset the incels in your IT department” – Simon Edge
• “Ask the female journalists you drove out of their jobs. If you can remember what ‘female’ means.” – Sarah Phillimore
• “There was the time a clownish far-Left publication insisted birthing bodies & chestfeeding were ‘inclusive’ terms. Gross.” – Rita Panagi
• “Is this an all staff email?” – Goody TwoShoes
• “You mean Owen Jones? Glad you finally got there.” – Frances Barber
• “Well, there’s this newspaper I used to read every issue of and then they decided to join a misogynist, science denialist cult and now every day I have to see articles from their journalists pretending women aren’t real anymore…” – Shambolic Neutral KPSS
• “How about the time a newspaper referred to women as menstrators? Which paper would insult women so horribly!? Think real hard. Give up? IT WAS YOU!!!” – Laura Marcus
• “Remember those articles you published about the Wi Spa incident, making out women and girls being exposed to a naked sex offender in the changing rooms were bigots?” – Andrea Paterson
• “I’ve had an awful amount of abuse, and a pile on orchestrated by your Owen Jones, who is really quite a horrific nasty bully.” – Red Tory
• “Just look to Owen Jones’s timeline & replies & write an article about that.” – Sall Grover
• “Seeing you get rid of Suzanne Moore and other female writers so you could keep misogynist opinion and misogynists like Owen Jones. You are truly the nastiest most anti-women paper in the UK.” – Lottie Lewis

You get the idea…

Stationery giant Paperchase has fallen into administration today, having failed to find a buyer for its 106 shops across the country. Tesco is only buying the brand and intellectual property, leaving 800 or so jobs at risk.

Guido’s old enough to remember when Paperchase faced a vicious backlash from angry customers in 2017, after bowing to pressure from anti-press freedom cranks not to advertise in the Daily Mail. At the time, one Owen Jones declared it “another victory against hatred”, and claimed the reaction was evidence of “a rightwing press lashing out from its death spiral”…

Today MailOnline reports on the death spiral of Paperchase, and the Daily Mail continues to sell millions of copies per year. As always: go woke, go broke…