More power to the press

It has for many years been a commonplace of political analysis that journalists have grown in stature as we politicians have shrunk. But the full reality of our reduced condition was rammed home to me, yet again, on the morning after the general election.

On the invitation of the BBC I went on telly to comment on the prospects of an exciting new Lib-Con coalition. I was falteringly trying to give my opinion when my interviewer, Jeremy Paxman, broke in.

‘Haven’t you got a city to run?’ he said with his trademark testiness. ‘Then why don’t you go off and run it!’

I did manage to say something in return, but by then Zeus had turned his shining eyes away and the overall effect was, no doubt, like a fifth-former caught in the tuck shop and being ticked off by the most sneering and flowery-waistcoated of all the prefects in the school.