Trevor Kavanagh

Through the winter of 2011-12, police dragged dozens of journalists from their beds in terrorist-style dawn raids. It was the beginning of a four-year nightmare; a politically motivated witch-hunt triggered, I believe, by a former state prosecutor who today presides as Britain’s Prime Minister. So I was astonished when Sir Keir Starmer popped up in my old newspaper, the Sun, recently to say: “This is a government that will always champion press freedoms.” Starmer did not think twice before putting innocent journalists in the dock. Yet he claims now that journalism “is the lifeblood of democracy” It was news to the men and women he dragged through the highest courts in the land, all of whom were declared innocent.

Cynical old hacks like me have been amused by the chorus of establishment applause for the Mail on Sunday’s great Kim Darroch scoop. Our elected masters were outraged, rightly, by threats from the Met’s Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu to criminalise editors who publish leaked memos. Politicians left, right and centre condemned an assault on press freedom. Alan Rusbridger, saintly ex-editor of the Guardian, demanded to know what they taught budding bobbies in police college these days. ‘I would like to suggest a new and compulsory course,’ he said. ‘Let’s call it “The Basics Of Free Speech”. Lesson number one. The police do not tell newspaper editors what to write.

Lord Mandelson’s memoirs left the real questions unanswered, says Trevor Kavanagh. If even he won’t tell the truth about the Blair-Brown years, who will? Peter Mandelson had a rich seam before him as he sat down to write The Third Man. He was present at the birth of New Labour, helped plot its path to power and then sat on the burning deck when it sank. From start to finish, Mandy was in the thick of it. Little wonder that there should be excitement about his memoirs. But anyone reading the three-part serialisation this week would be left wondering — where is the dynamite? Either the Times had missed the best bits, or Lord Mandelson has sold us all short.