Unless Piers Morgan is careful, Richard Desmond could buy the Mirror

Piers Morgan, the editor of the Daily Mirror, is an opponent of the coming war against Iraq. Fair enough. Many of us are unhappy about it. But he has taken his opposition to extreme and, I would say, imprudent lengths. To use a military analogy, he has fired off his biggest nuclear missiles without first going through the range of lesser weaponry. Last week there was an enormous picture of Tony Blair on the Mirror’s front page with his hands covered in blood. It referred to an inside rant by John Pilger. The previous day the front-page headline had told George Bush to ‘Cool it, Cowboy’. Day after day the paper inveighs against war. Most of its readers may be sceptics, but I cannot believe that they relish coverage that is both hysterical and obsessional. Our boys, after all, are steaming towards the Gulf. What will the Mirror do when the fighting starts? It is one thing to argue that there is insufficient proof to justify war against Iraq; quite another to depict Tony Blair as a mass murderer on a par with Saddam Hussein.

Perhaps I am being naive. Perhaps the childish outbursts of ‘red top’ tabloids are not taken very seriously by their readers. When the first shot is fired, and Mr Morgan falls in behind our boys, the readers may simply shrug their shoulders and barely notice. I don’t really think so. Mr Morgan’s more extreme japes endanger the reputation of the paper he happens to edit. No British newspaper has ever opposed a war in such a manner. For all his undoubted flair, Mr Morgan is considerably pushing his luck. He is an editor who is partly out of control, and he lacks a strong proprietor or hands-on chairman with editorial nous to stay his hand.