Jacob Young: Government Minister attacks Yorkshire Post journalist with insults and intimidation - here's what happened

Over the years Mr Sunak, when it comes to The Yorkshire Post and its journalists at least, has been gracious with his time and clear with his words. When Chancellor, The Yorkshire Post was amongst the first newspapers he called to brief out what was coming ahead of the Budget. I should know, I took the call and scribbled down the notes. Four years ago, he took a walk about in his constituency alongside the late, great Tom Richmond the then comment editor for The Yorkshire Post whose reputation for not suffering fools went before him. Tom’s judgement of character was faultless. Reflecting on his time spent with Rishi Sunak - READ HERE - Tom said this:

“Whilst it is naive to assess any politician during a 20-minute interview, Rishi Sunak has an extraordinary depth and breadth of knowledge that can only help the country. He came over as a sincere statesman and even Labour MPs have contacted me to say they’re impressed by him and have time for him.”

So, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is many things - not all of them endearing, nobody’s perfect and all that - but one word and one sentiment that repeatedly follows him around is sincerity. Scroll forwards the best part of half a decade and Mr Sunak, this time as Prime Minister, sits down with another one of The Yorkshire Post’s journalists, our Westminster Correspondent, Mason Boycott-Owen. It’s an exclusive interview during which Mr Sunak laments the causticity of the town square; the toxicity of public life; the tone of the national conversation. He said:

“Many MPs in recent weeks and months have not felt safe, either in their homes or out and about doing their events. That’s not right. Our values in this country are ones of tolerance, decency and respect.”

Friday night, around 6pm, and I’m alerted to one of my journalists being attacked online - this isn’t unusual, I’m afraid. He’s upset and in distress - more so, it seemed to me, than would normally be the case when someone takes aim at any one of us. More so, it transpired, because on this occasion, the person responsible is a Government Minister - Jacob Young, Levelling Up Minister.

Let me give you a little more context: citing evidence gleaned from Freedom of Information request documents, Leigh Jones penned an article - which Mr Young contributed to, giving a good account of himself, I initially thought - that is entirely truthful. Completely evidence-based. Good journalism, you might say. Were it not, there is a regulator - IPSO - that keeps us honest and laws of the land that bring about consequences should those laws be broken.

Pop your political allegiances to one side for a moment. You all know my mantra by now: be guided not by right versus left but by right versus wrong.

In short, The Yorkshire Post - as well as Private Eye - has seen correspondence which shows that despite having recused himself from Government decision-making matters relating to British Steel, after it revealed plans to build an electric arc furnace in his constituency, the Levelling Up Minister had been invited by Mayor Ben Houchen to a meeting to discuss such matters with Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch - she politely declined citing diary constraints. So, despite having recused himself from the decision-making process in relation to the furnace plans, he was invited to be in and around the conversations had between the business secretary and Mayor Houchen in relation to the matter. Both men would, I am quite sure, say this is and was a matter of courtesy to an MP whose constituents would stand to be impacted by the plans. Mr Houchen was simply keeping Mr Young in the loop, they’d say, and most right-minded folk would, perhaps in times where trust was stronger between politicians and the public, have taken that in good faith. So far, so bland.

Incidentally, The Yorkshire Post has also seen evidence of Mayor Houchen telling leaders of Chinese business behemoth Jingye that he would ‘directly challenge government’, on their behalf, to try to win for them taxpayer-funded fillips to help bring to fruition their electric steel-making furnace, a furnace that requires gargantuan amounts of power - power that will be supplied by a private enterprise - Steel River Energy - a company set up and 90%-owned by local businessmen Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney. They just happen to be the same two people to whom Lord Houchen gave 90% of the company responsible for marketing and leasing the former Redcar steelworks site in a move now described by the chairman of Middlesbrough Football Club and prominent captain of industry Steve Gibson as ‘dangerous, stupid, unforgivable.’

So, after all that, you can, I hope, see why we believe the myriad comings and goings on Teesside amongst politicians and money-makers are worthy of honest scrutiny. Mr Gibson said it like this: ‘Ben Houchen has given away hundreds of millions of pounds without any explanation.’ Ben Houchen also happened to invite Jacob Young into a room with the business secretary to - presumably, as he promised - ‘directly challenge government’ to hand over state-funding to a Chinese-owned business that would ultimately be powered by privately-supplied electricity sold to the furnace by two men who have, by and large, been the principle recipients of the money Steve Gibson refers to.

So, you’d think Jacob Young would welcome the chance to inform, via trusted media, his constituents about these matters, right? You’d think he would be keen to acknowledge that people are worried more millions might be given away 'without explanation' - because I can tell you, they are. You’d think a little humility, nay, what did the Prime Minister call for? Oh, yes: tolerance, decency and respect…might be in order?

Well, what Jacob Young did next was none of those things. What he did was and remains utterly deplorable. Unacceptable of anyone, let alone a Government Minister. Unbelievably, he took it upon himself to attack my reporter - your reporter, in truth - personally, repeatedly and to incite others to do the same. He bullied him. There’s no better word. He insulted him. He sought to damage his reputation and his character, both of which could harm his future employment prospects and cause those who know him to think worse of him.

Jacob Young, MP | Facebook & Instagram pages: “Just opened up Twitter to see a crank ‘journalist’ having a go over the fact I have met with British Steel … saying I shouldn’t have done so because I am a Government Minister.”

I can categorically tell you that nowhere in the article does Leigh Jones even suggest, let alone ‘say’ Mr Young should not have met with British Steel. The article simply observes that he was invited to a meeting to discuss the very same by the Tees Valley Mayor. Mr Young alone arrived at any interpretation of wrongdoing himself. His reasons for doing so are his to explain.

Not content at having labelled Leigh a ‘crank’, in and of itself a deeply hurtful slur that casts aspersions as to someone's mental health, he signs off his message to constituents: ‘I don’t care what some left-wing fake journalist thinks.’

Crank? Fake journalist? A man named Stan Glover asks the Minister: ‘He’s an investigative journalist. Why label him a crank?’ The Yorkshire Post has thrown a clear light on Teesworks.’

The Minister replies - in a public forum, remember, where not everyone has good intentions: ‘He’s not a journalist, he is a conspiracy theorist.’

Crank? Fake journalist? Conspiracy theorist? These are damaging, personal, potentially harmful allegations made against a member of my team - simply for doing his job. Were they to come from a no-mark on the street they would likely carry no weight at all so hysterically ludicrous are they. But made by a Government Minister, they are likely to be taken seriously by the general public - there is evidence of this on Mr Young’s Facebook page; many of Mr Young’s followers were energised by his attacks on Leigh - and so are defamatory.

Mr Young continued his intimidation of Leigh on Twitter: ‘you implied I did something wrong’ he states - you can see it HERE. Quite why he feels the article suggests as much is unclear. It states matters of fact in a perfectly neutral way. The only person suggesting wrongdoing, again, is the Minister himself.

With Leigh now feeling stressed and vulnerable, as others joined in the pile-on, yet another Tory MP, this time Mark Jenkinson, felt it his place to also target the besieged victim of Mr Young’s unwarranted attacks, wading in to further insult him, calling Leigh ‘delusional’, again in a public forum. He goes on to suggest journalism done by my team is ‘the worst form of clickbait’. So, the M.O in a nutshell: attack, intimidate, insult and demean the individual whilst denigrating and undermining the journalism in the hope of discrediting it, suppressing it. Powerful, influential men whose salary comes from the public purse behaving like pack-hound bullies, braying at a truth-teller for telling the truth.

Ordinarily, incidents such as this are dealt with internally. We support our colleagues as best we can and more-often-than-not the worry wanes and we carry on. Yet, not least given what the Prime Minister told us when we sat down with him earlier this year, I feel I must make representations to both Rishi Sunak and to the office of the Speaker of the House. Those two things I shall be doing.

I would also urge messrs Young and Jenkinson to reflect on their words and conduct, and think about the possible consequences that come when people with public profiles like Leigh are demonised in the minds of the general public by people who should know better.

Before I leave you with Leigh’s feelings, I ask this of you: do not do to these men what they did to Leigh. You're all much better than that.

"I was incredibly surprised to see a government minister take to different social media platforms last week to launch a personal attack against me for an article to which he had voluntarily contributed.

"His attacks on me were sustained and continued the next day, with another MP joining in to call me "delusional" - this appears to be a deliberate and intentional ploy to bully me for simply doing my job.

"I'm completely happy for criticism to be aimed at articles I write, or to other abstract entities like The Yorkshire Post, but for a member of the government to direct personal abuse - without providing examples to back up his criticisms - was distressing."

James Mitchinson

Editor, The Yorkshire Post

Write to James: [email protected]