Mehdi Hasan and the Daily Mail

1. So what if Mehdi Hasan pitched himself to work for the Daily Mail three years ago? Journalists, especially those without a berth - as Mehdi was at the time - have got to work to live. And of course he's going to emphasise how much a prospective employer's values are congruent with his own. I'm sure if he'd gone for a job at The Morning Star, he would have burnished his peace and socialism credentials. This is so much nonsense. In my time I've known teachers at Catholic schools who, in turns, were gay, an avowed atheist, and a Trotskyist. I've known Sainsbury's workers who prefer shopping at Tesco and Asda. How many staff at the Mail hate the crap they're reputedly paid well to write? How many newspaper editors laud family values when they themselves out of choice, not necessity, screw around behind their partners' backs? Little hypocrisies grease the wheels of working life, and this will not change.

2. Publishing extracts of a letter of application is not only immoral, the Data Protection Act may have been breached. This was essentially private correspondence of a commercial nature. All employers I've ever dealt with are obligated to state that information a potential employee provides will be treated confidentially, and that is the case whether applications are solicited or not. I'm not a legal bod and I hope someone in the know will be able to clarify this point. Unlawful or not, it cuts against the professional standards one would expect of any employer and shows the Mail and The Spectator as spiteful, gutter publications that will stoop to every low in pursuit of a vendetta.

3. Unfortunately, his monstering will achieve the desired effect among some on the left. That Mehdi is a socially conservative Muslim is hardly news, seeing as he's already written about it. "He's not really one of us" scream the lefty types for whom politics is an identity choice, and debate is about denunciation, not persuasion. Meanwhile labour movement folk who prefer to think and act about bringing positive social change will ignore the shrill cries and continue to welcome Mehdi's muscular take down of the Tories, their press and their politics. If we're going to have to wait for everyone to be a perfectly rounded-out socialist being, we'll be stuck doing nothing for a long time.