Media

Nick Clegg was in combative mood on the Andrew Marr show earlier this morning; he railed against the press and the Daily Mail in particular. It wasn’t exactly an illuminating session, but here are some highlights: Clegg on the Mail: “Can I put this mildly? I really wouldn't believe a word you read in the Daily Mail. This is the paper that called me a Nazi. They and other papers have got a bee in their bonnet about the coalition. They come up with drivel every single day. I'm in this because I believe it's the right thing to do...I want to see us succeed in the coalition and beyond...Miriam supports me...” Clegg on his leadership: “Absolutely. I intend to serve well beyond one term. There you go. Daily Mail wrong.

The anti-abortion lobby is unfortunate to have been lumped this week with Nadine Dorries as its unofficial spokesperson. Nadine is actually PRO-abortion, for starters, as she never seems to tire of pointing out. She does, however, possess many of the unpleasant characteristics associated with pro-lifers: she's preachy, brimming with self-righteous zeal, and incapable of seeing her opponents' point of view. She didn't deserve to be barracked in the House of Commons today, perhaps, but the obnoxious way in which she argued for her amendment sealed its fate.

If Tony Blair thought that a meeting with Gordon Brown was like dental surgery without anaesthetic, one wonders how David Cameron would describe being questioned on Europe by Bill Cash and Bernard Jenkin. At the liaison committee, the two veteran eurosceptics pushed Cameron on why he was supporting far greater fiscal integration in the Eurozone. Cameron’s answer was, basically, that this was the only way the Eurozone could be made to work. But one can’t help but feel that greater fiscal integration is simply storing up problems for the medium term given that it will do nothing about the divergence in competitiveness between Eurozone members. The rest of the session was dominated by yet more questions about relations between politicians and the media.

It is a sign of just how close the Blairs and the Murdochs were that Tony is godfather to one of Rupert Murdoch’s young daughters. But it is also a sign of the changed politics around Murdoch that this news will now be a major embarrassment to Blair. Wendi Deng Murdoch has, the Daily Telegraph reports, told the October edition of Vogue that Blair was present at the christening of her two daughters on the banks of the River Jordan last year. He is, the paper says, godfather to the elder one.

Public Enemy Number One, the unlikely figure of Dr David Starkey, is back in the papers; this time writing in the Telegraph to meet the cacophonous heckles that followed his appearance on Newsnight. Starkey begins with a viperous assault on Ed Miliband’s view that his comments were “disgusting and outrageous”, pointing out that black educationalists Tony Sewell and Katharine Birbalsingh broadly agree with him. Starkey then goes on to restate his position. The summer of discontent has revealed the “different patterns of integration at the top and bottom of the social scale.

The press’s tendency to feature female students receiving their A-Level results rather than their male counterparts is coming in for a fair bit of ribbing today. The Guardian diary yesterday revealed quite how far some schools are prepared to go to get their pupils on the front page: “And yet eyebrows were raised at Diary HQ on receipt of an email from Badminton School, inviting Fleet Street to feature a selection of pupils on results morning who "speak extremely well and take a good picture". "I have a fabulous case study of a girl … who sadly lost her mother … and is now an active charity campaigner," reads the email from director of admissions and marketing Henrietta Lightwood.

I read the news today, oh boy — and it seems that Paul McCartney has waded into the phone hacking row. After claims by his ex-wife, Heather Mills, that her voicemails were accessed by the Daily Mirror, the former Beatle is now set to share his own concerns with the police. Although we cannot yet be sure of the specifics of Sir Paul's case, the whole episode is likely to increase the pressure on Piers Morgan, who was editor of the Mirror when the alleged hacking of Mrs Mills' phone went down.

Yesterday, in his statement to the Commons, David Cameron responded to a question from Labour MP Helen Goodman about Andy Coulson by saying: ‘He was vetted. He had a basic level of vetting. He was not able to see the most secret documents in the Government. I can write to the hon. Lady if she wants the full details of that vetting. It was all done in the proper way. He was subject to the special advisers’ code of conduct. As someone shouted from behind me, he obeyed that code, unlike Damian McBride.’ The story has developed since then.