Newsnight of the long knives

The controversy over the appointment of TUC economist Duncan Weldon as Newsnight’s economics correspondent has taken a surreal twist. The former Labour Party adviser appears to have used his blog to deaden the impact of a Sunday paper exposé about his connections with the extreme right. Weldon admits to a ‘brief and misguided flirtation with the ideas of the far right,’ yet denied that he had joined any organisation. However, when he was a student he wrote an anonymous piece about this ‘flirtation’ for a student newspaper, under the headline ‘I was a fascist’.

All water under the bridge, he now says:

‘None of this should be read as a plea for sympathy. This chapter of my teenage life was witless and intensely embarrassing and I compounded the idiocy with a boastful and ill-judged piece of student journalism a few years later. I don’t believe anyone who has known me as an adult would recognise the adolescent prat I have been describing here, but I’m sure many of us know of teenagers who have done worse too. Reflecting