Hull Daily Mail editor John Meehan has challenged critics of the paper’s campaign to oust Hull’s education director to take it to the Press Complaints Commission.

In a front-page comment, headlined “Go Now”, the Mail called on Joan Taylor to resign, as the national school league tables placed the city bottom for the fourth year in a row.

The call was backed by 75 per cent of respondents in a poll of readers conducted by phone, post and online.

But Labour-controlled Kingston-upon-Hull City Council closed ranks around Ms Taylor, and accused the Mail of a “witch hunt”.

Council leader Councillor Pat Doyle put down a motion to a meeting of the full council condemning the paper’s “personalised and unprincipled attack” upon Ms Taylor. The motion also praised her “untiring efforts over the past four years in striving to raise educational aspirations and achievements”.

At the council meeting, Labour councillors accused the Mail of a “vicious campaign” and of having a “bloodlust”, while opposition members supported the paper’s right to call for Ms Taylor to go.

In the paper’s Comment column, Mr Meehan said the descriptions applied to the Mail and its campaign were “so irrational and ludicrous as to be unworthy of response”.

But he stressed that it was the Mail’s duty, as a campaigning newspaper, to hold the education director to account for the city’s dismal educational performance.

And he challenged anyone who wished to take issue with the paper’s coverage to make an official complaint to the Press Complaints Commission.

Mr Meehan said: “I am completely satisfied that our reporting and editorial position on a matter of intense local public interest has been both accurate and justified.

“In fact I am so confident that it has been within the letter and the spirit of the Code of Conduct that I am inviting complaints.

“I am certain that any complaint to the PCC would be given very short shrift indeed.”

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