Con Coughlin 'owned' by Owen Jones

Readers of this blog will know we have long regarded with some humour Con Coughlin’s defence pieces in the Telegraph; too many are clearly the result of a good lunch with an MoD official and a rehash of a MoD briefing to endow it with the gloss of journalism. His columns have always been useful in stating the official MoD policy without the MoD having to, erm, state its official policy. We thought everyone knew. 

Perhaps not. In a surprising piece of actual journalism, lefty polemicist Owen Jones has just taken Coughlin’s entire journalistic career apart in a series of linked posts on Twitter. Con Coughlin is reported to have deleted his twitter account in response. If true and accurate, Jones has indeed ‘owned’ Coughlin, in the vernacular of the young. But two questions are foremost -

- Why was this not published in the Guardian? Was the story spiked on a ‘dog don’t bite bitch’ journy-chums basis? 

- Will Coughlin now sue? 

I shall sit down with a large glass of port and re-read the whole thing again. This kind of waspish MSM in-fighting is just the thing to round-off Sunday.