We read that rock-chick and tory rottweiler Louise Mensch took a couple of smacks to the snout the other day. The first was in having to provide Piers Morgan with a fulsome apology for “misreading” his accounts regarding the use of phone-hacking. The second involved desperately fending off press enquiries into her own chequered past.
Mrs Mensch told a recent culture, media and sport committee that the former Daily Mirror editor had confessed in his memoirs to various misdeeds. She was protected by parliamentary privilege at the time and sensibly declined to repeat her allegations outside. Libel proceedings aside however, misleading a committee is just as heinous an offence for an MP as a media mogul (honest!). An apology was therefore prudent.
The powers of darkness nevertheless decided that further retribution was needed – if only to send out a message to MPs that the press still has a modicum muscle at its disposal. Hence several disclosures have emerged of semi-riotous behaviour by the MP for Corby in a former life, thanks to usually reliable sources.
A comment seen on a media blog this weekend is that anyone in the Palace of Westminster who thinks that Grub Street is on the ropes is either deluded or on strong medication. This seems to imply that exposure as a “corrupt crack-head paedo” in the Sunday Spurt is the penalty for confronting press excesses. It will be interesting to see if the message remains as defiant once the Leveson inquiry gets underway.
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