British hacks may be disgusting but we keep the politicians on their toes

A very high-minded European recently complained to me about British newspapers. Why are they all so awful, he asked? Even the so-called serious ones look like comics, with their pictures of footballers and half-naked actresses on the masthead. As for the tabloids, he went on, their venom, iconoclasm and sheer beastliness, not to mention their obsession with third-rate celebrities, were incroyable. France had a truly intellectual newspaper in Le Monde, whose cultural, foreign and political coverage surpassed anything available in Britain. And Germany, Italy and Spain boasted several almost equally fine papers, and had nothing which remotely compared to our trashy tabloids.

He looked at me with pity, and I muttered that maybe he had a point. Had I not grumbled in this very column about the dumbing down of the Times, masterminded by my old friend? Did I not last week take issue with the new editor of the Sun, Rebekah Wade, who in her previous job running the News of the World inflamed the mobs who went a-rampaging through several British cities? It would take a hard nut not to concede that my high-minded French friend had a point.