Letters | 18 October 2008

Our story

Sir: Your political editor writes (‘Peter v. George is the key battle’, 11 October) that Peter Mandelson’s conversation on Corfu where he ‘dripped pure poison’ about Gordon Brown was leaked to the press within hours and only later became front-page news. In fact only one paper broke the story initially, the Sunday Times. This is an interesting example of what is known in the trade as the Watergate defence. Everyone ‘knew’ American presidents authorised bugging so Woodward and Bernstein’s stories were no stories at all. There may be a difference in the scale of the revelations but the same principle applies. A scoop is a scoop.

Martin Ivens
Deputy editor, Sunday Times, London E1

Institutional nonsense



Sir: Charles Moore warns against the danger that a new inquiry into police racism by the Metropolitan Police Authority might ‘feed the monster’ of racist lobbying (The Spectator’s Notes, 11 October). He reminds us of the ‘unfairness’ of the Macpherson Report.