The Observer’s embarrassing John Stonehouse blunder

Oh dear. In their endless Tory-bashing quest, it seems that the Observer has blundered again. The release of a new ITV show on a dodgy 1970s politician with a propensity for scandal prompted columnist Catherine Bennett to write how he ‘paved the way for today’s sleazy Tory MPs.’ In an article that appears in today’s newspaper, she mused how this politician’s ‘rackety life and faked death… seems almost quaint compared with the brazenness of members of his party today.’

There’s just one problem of course – the new ITV series is about John Stonehouse, a Labour MP. You might have thought that, while watching the series, claims about Soviet contacts and prostitutes in Czechoslovakia might have given Bennett and her Observer colleagues pause for thought. Clearly not. A correction has now been inserted online noting that ‘an earlier version of this article mistakenly referred to John Stonehouse as a Conservative MP.’