No heirs apparent in Middle England

Could the 'Mail' get by without Dacre? asks Heather Tomlinson

The Daily Mail is a newspaper of passion. It rails against asylum-seekers, political correctness, bureaucrats and Arsenal, while championing the interests of Middle England. It is feared by politicians, hated by the left but lauded by the right.

It is described as either "brilliant" or "odious", and at a debate last Thursday, entitled "The trouble with this country is the Daily Mail", both views were vigorously expressed.

To satirist Francis Wheen, the Mail has a liking for "gibberish". To Times columnist Mary Ann Sieghart, it is "shockingly misogynist" and against people who are gay, black, foreign or unmarried. "I can feel hate oozing from every page," she says. But for Peter Oborne, editor of The Spectator, these are the "delusions of a fevered mind". He says: "If you like objectivity, you would see that with its circulation of 2.4 million, it is more in touch with people than The Times, with its 600,000."

There is no doubt the Mail is a commercial phenomenon. It has had a decade of steady year-on-year growth in circulation, although last year was an exception.

Financially, the Daily Mail and General Trust, the bulk of whose turnover comes from the national newspapers, is powerful. Group profit has halved since 1999, but in the midst of an advertising recession, this performance is respectable. The national titles have actually increased turnover during these years and last year made an operating profit of £80m.

The man most responsible for this growth is Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail since 1992. Mr Dacre arouses as many emotions as the articles he prints. One former employee says: "He is the devil, there is no question." Another describes him as a "towering journalistic genius".

But recently the newspaper has been without its intellectual fuel, as Mr Dacre is in the middle of a two-month break, recovering from a heart operation. His absence has raised the question of who might succeed him if he retires.

Running the Daily Mail at present is the deputy editor, Alistair Sinclair, regarded as a safe pair of hands but not widely tipped as the next editor. Internally, the deputy editor of the London Evening Standard, Ian McGregor, is thought to be in the running as he is close to proprietor Lord Rothermere and seen as a chip off the Dacre block. Meanwhile, Peter Wright, the editor of the Mail on Sunday, is described as Mr Dacre's "intellectual soul mate".

Other candidates include Veronica Wadley, editor of the Evening Standard, who has boosted circulation figures in her reign of just over a year.

But to one former senior executive, there is no obvious candidate. "I think they have a real problem," says the source. "What you have got is a lot of people who, when he isn't there, say 'What would Paul say?' They don't have a next generation of independent-minded people. The Mail is traditionally not good at promoting its talent."

Staff culture is the source of another major criticism. The anti-Mail camp in the debate claimed journalists on the paper's Femail section were called the "Tampax team" by Mr Wright, and argued that some stories sympathetic to black people were buried. Meanwhile, young journalists who have departed develop nervous tics when remembering Tony Gallagher, the news editor described as a "Rottweiler".

But Mr Dacre has been instrumental in investing heavily in the newspaper. "Paul has sold to Rothermere the idea of investing in journalists – the antithesis of the Daily Express culture," says an industry insider. "I suspect his successor will have to fight some battles to prevent cutbacks."

Fighting battles is a regular activity on the newspaper, whether with Cherie Blair, Ken Livingstone or Gerhard Schröder. But will its aggressive energy wane without the nuclear reactor of Mr Dacre?