Charles Moore: I'm on Twitter! But what do I say?

AS THE WHOLE Leveson wrangle approaches its climax (or anti-climax), one collateral, innocent victim of it all is the Queen. The government ruse to make its proposed system of statutory regulation seem less objectionable was to burble on about a Royal Charter and the Privy Council. By doing so, it hoped to put the matter beyond politics. But the implication that the enterprise is sanctioned by monarchical neutrality is a) untrue and b) embarrassing for the monarch. Untrue because in royal charters, as in legislation, the Sovereign acts solely on the advice of her ministers, making no personal contribution; embarrassing because, by seeking royal cover for its actions, the government drops the monarch into a very tricky issue, giving her no means to defend herself. Like Tony Blair’s attempt to abolish the office of Lord Chancellor over a weekend, or Gordon Brown’s pretence that Downing Street would no longer have anything to do with ecclesiastical appointments, this is inconsiderate. The machine did not protect the Palace enough, despite polite protests. Government on one side and the press on the other are making the Crown piggy in the middle.

A FRIEND has exhumed instructions issued to Daily Mail journalists by their editor, Mike Randall, in the mid-1960s, about how to behave. The first three items read: ‘1. No member of Daily Mail staff intrudes or is called upon to intrude into private lives where no public interest is involved. 2. No ordinary member of the public is lured, coerced or in any way pressed by a Daily Mail representative into giving an interview or picture which he is clearly unwilling to give. 3. It remains our duty at all times to expose the fraud and reveal the mountebank wherever the public interest is involved.’ This is a good deal crisper than Leveson, but it may be significant that Mr Randall lasted only three years in the editor’s chair, before being removed because of falling circulation.