Some Guy Behind The Editor's Desk

Sordel learnt a valuable lesson from the example of Jonathan Aitken.

For those too young (or perhaps too old) too remember him, Aitken was one of what seemed at the time a great many Conservative politicians forced to resign by various scandals last century. This one is rather more interesting to us today than some of the others because it involved the Saudis, but what people tend to remember is not the scandal itself but the speech that Aitken made when embarking upon a catastrophic libel action that landed him in prison for perjury:

If it falls to me to start a fight to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in our country with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of fair play, so be it, I am ready for the fight. The fight against falsehood and those who peddle it.

And the lesson that Sordel learnt from this episode is that the clearest evidence available to us that someone is a scoundrel is the grandiloquence with which they appeal to high principle.

At which one turns to Michael Gove.

Gove - whom under normal circumstances one would have dismissed as a pompous nitwit perhaps shortly before he opened his mouth but certainly shortly thereafter - has managed to hold much of the country thrall beneath his mesmeric, piscine glassiness during his tenure as Secretary of State for Education. He is rather like an unsettling child who, having been liberated from the need to blink by genetic abnormality, settles all arguments with a staring competition.

"Good fellow, Gove" we mutter nervously, leaving him in the classroom at break to eat flies and cogitate on future improvements to the English Baccalaureate.

His appearance before the Leveson Inquiry yesterday revealed, however, the man's Inner Aitken as he proceeded to lecture Lord Leveson about the Freedom of the Press and admonish him pre-emptively for seeking to curtail it in any way.

Gove (like Aitken as it happens) is a former journalist who finds himself on the Westminster side of a revolving door. Presumably having been rendered giddy by passing through it, Gove seemed to have forgotten himself completely, regarding his testimony as an opportunity to bloviate insufferably in a manner that is fairly characterised by Esther Addley in The Guardian.

Clearly his dizziness was infectious as well, since it was clear from the tone of voice employed by both Robert Jay and his judicial master that their eyes were rolling almost as persistently as Gove's vainglorious oratory. Go watch the full performance if you can find the time.

Clearly such a man is not to be contained in my Promethean nutshell: like the Press itself he strides free of such bounds bearing the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of fair play.

Still: it might be appropriate for him to remember that those editors of whom he speaks in tones befitting deities did all put their trousers on one leg at a time. The Press is all very well in abstract, but in particular some of them might prove to be the sort of odious tick who would presume to lecture a judge on his public duties for the sake of striking a public pose.

In such cases it is surely justified to extend the right to freedom of speech only grudgingly and with scant reason for celebration.

Cameron Behind

A report in The Huffington Post this morning suggests that Tory activists have been using tactical voting methods in the London mayoral elections in an effort to push Liberal Democrats candidate Brian Paddick into a humiliating fourth or fifth place.

Even The Huffington Post's own article suggests that the number of voters using this tactic may be very low, but it is sadly indicative of the times that it should even have been formulated.

Ever since the Tories romped back to power, they have behaving like someone who has stepped in something, desperately scraping the soles of their shoes in order to remove the Lib Dems. Indeed, for the first year of the coalition government both Labour and the Conservatives found common ground in their desire to return the Lib Dems to their former state of total unelectability.

That was all very well when the Conservatives were working towards the idea of a clean victory in 2015, but right now hopes of that seem to be draining away.

Moreover, events may yet conspire to strengthen the Lib Dems' hand. Remember Business Secretary Vince Cable, whose responsibilities to oversee News Corp's bid for BSkyB were removed from him and given to Jeremy Hunt? At the time Cable was made to look very stupid by a Daily Telegraph sting (which was later the subject of a successful complaint to the Press Complaints Commission). Now, however, he looks remarkably like the only British politician to shake hands with the Murdochs and retain his small change & pocket watch.

To a different extent the same can be said of Clegg himself. Having been variously depicted as hapless, clueless and ineffectual, he can scarcely be portrayed now as having anything more than a bystander role in the policies that have proved most unpopular for the coalition. While George Osborne was preparing his politically catastrophic budget, Clegg & Cable were pushing the idea of a "Mansion Tax".

As fig leaves go it may be small, but it beats going around stark bollock naked.

Of course, the recovery in Lib Dem fortunes has been predicted more often than the end of the world, the only difference between them being that at some point the world assuredly will end. Of less concern to the Conservatives than the rise of the Lib Dems, however, will be their own fall: something in which they are likely to prove the principal architect. Had they kept the Lib Dems relatively strong, they might have prevented Labour from jumping from third place into first in the Birmingham council elections last night.

In an ideal world the Lib Dems could act like a hedge fund for the Tories: an opportunity to invest both in ice creams and umbrellas. Right now - as Britain wrings out its prematurely knotted handkerchiefs beneath the pitilessly grey Spring skies - Cameron seems to have gone full-tilt into the ice cream business.

Unqualified Writer Questions Qualified Writer's Qualifications Shock

Writing in The Times yesterday, Kevin Maher took to task Lucy Worsley for introducing herself as "Dr. Lucy Worsley" on what he rather high-handedly terms "the BBC's pop-history show" If Walls Could Talk: The History of the Home. Evidently the only people permitted to refer to themselves as doctor are those who kiss Kevin's boo-boos and allow him to take a lollypop from the jar.

Naturally it's not that Maher is just bothered about the doctor thing: he has another axe to grind with her and just lampoons her obvious self-importance as a side-swipe. To show that he is no mere sneering oik, however, he does let drop that he is quite au fait with this education business himself and has an M.A. ... but naturally (being the sort of person who sets these gew-gaws at a clear-sighted estimation of their importance) he got over that some years ago and is no longer clinging to it.

Let's just compare those two qualifications then, shall we?

Lucy Worsley is Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces. "She's also a winner of the Royal Historical Society's Frampton Prize, a visiting professor at Kingston University, and one of the few beardless Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries." (God help us ... even Sordel is beginning to go off her!) She is the author of several books about history and her doctoral thesis was written on a subject in the history of architecture.

One might almost think that she introduces herself on her programme as "doctor" to reassure the audience that, unlike many people who present programmes on television, she is actually qualified to speak on her subject with authority. (And let's just leave on one side the additional defence that she was probably encouraged to style herself so by the BBC programme-makers.)

Now, Kevin Maher.

He may not have written his biog on The Times website, but he might have at least proofread it: "Kevin has been a film editor forThe Face magazine, a film pundit for The Big Breakfast, and a film researcher for Channel 4. He now writes about film, because he can" [sic]

Exactly what he "can" is left unsaid, or at least unpunctuated, but at least we have discovered that film is Kevin's metier.

Well, Film Studies is perhaps not the most elevated of academic subject ... but we should certainly congratulate Kevin on sticking to what he loves and making a career of it. A Masters degree is, after all, still a Masters degree and Film Studies need fear no bullying from the likes of Architectural History.

Except Kevin's Masters dissertation is not in Film Studies. Its title - as he mentions in his column - is "Beyond Good and Evil: A Post-Feminist Analysis of Charlotte Brontë's Villette With Respect to Nietzsche". [sic]

Does it perchance become crystal clear why Maher is so opposed to academic willy-waving when he has no relevant qualifications in the field in which he writes? (And this despite the fact that there must be suitably-qualified writers queuing around the block at all nearby Job Centres.)

Moreover, those schooled in reading dissertation titles will be ready to set at nought Kevin's endeavours with even more zeal than he himself modestly brings to bear. A dissertation advancing a "post-feminist" analysis reading one novel by Brontë (1816-55) in the light of the student's almost certainly superficial acquaintance with the work of Nietzsche (1844-1900) ... that's basically university code for "here's a load of crap I made up to look interesting to girls".

A show of modesty when one has so much to be modest about is scarcely virtuous, Mister Maher.