As noted a short while ago, the Press Complaints Commission ruled that it had found a Daily Mail diary piece about potential Conservative candidate Iain Dale not to be in breach of the PCC code. “I still think it was a clear breach of Section 12 [discrimination] of the PCC code.  I quite agree with what they say about the right to offend, but this was gratuitous and it was the second time it had happened,” Iain Dale told Journalism.co.uk.

“I have no idea if it affected my chances in Bracknell [constituency where Dale was competing for the Conservative candidacy], but it certainly wouldn’t have helped. It seems clear to me now that the PCC will reach the same judgment in the Jan Moir case.”

Meanwhile, Guardian blogger Roy Greenslade, who agrees with the PCC ruling on this occasion, ‘imagine[s] that the commission will take the same view about Jan Moir’s column, which was far more offensive than Ephraim’s remarks about Dale’.