If Simon Marcus fails to win the seat of Hampstead and Kilburn for the Conservatives on May 7, the Daily Mail and its Sunday stablemate will share no responsibility.
Over the weekend, true blue titles the Mail and The Mail on Sunday took the axe to Mr Marcus’s parliamentary rivals with stinging attacks on their credibility.
Liberal Democrat Maajid Nawaz was the first to fall victim to a hatchet job, with a prominent piece in Saturday’s Mail lambasting him for a “drunken night of temptation” in an east London strip club.
The article featured CCTV images of a clearly recognisable Mr Nawaz enjoying an intimate private lap dance from a stripper during his stag do last July.
It transpires that the CCTV footage was leaked to the Mail by the club’s owner who described Mr Nawaz as a “hypocrite” for acting as a “spokesman for Islam” while visiting a strip club during the holy month of Ramadan.
The Mail on Sunday got in on the action the following day by pulling out a familiar archive image of Labour’s Tulip Siddiq stood next to her aunt, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and accusing her of “failing to tell voters” of the meeting.
In 2013, the Ham&High ran a front page article on Ms Siddiq’s photo opportunity with Mr Putin after it was used in a smear campaign against the young politician during Labour’s selection race for a candidate in Hampstead and Kilburn.
Mr Marcus must now be looking over his shoulder.
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