The real political fight was Boulton v Campbell

Why can’t Alastair Campbell understand that proper journalists aren’t partisan and malevolent, asks Rod Liddle. Most of them just genuinely want to uncover the truth

Who were you rooting for in the real political battle of the week, Adam Boulton of Sky News versus Alastair Campbell? It didn’t quite come to a ruck, which is an enormous shame, but Adam did pursue Campbell in the manner of one of those inexplicably angry men you sometimes meet in a kebab shop at two in the morning, driven by a splenetic fury and a sense of implacable self-righteousness and with sputum dribbling down the front of his nursery-coloured acrylic leisurewear. You can watch it right now, on YouTube, if you like. If only he had actually grabbed hold of Campbell and howled, ‘Want some, you slaaaag?’, then my election week would have been almost perfection; Lembit, Jacqui, Vera vanquished, the ghastly Clegg brought down to earth and revealed as a far less competent leader than any of his six predecessors, including the dog murderer, Mandelson’s strategy proving inept, Cameron finding out that style will take you only so far, Nick Griffin looking a bit like Hitler would have looked in 1932 if he’d just been told by the returning officer that he’d come third in Belsen South and could thus be comfortably ignored by Hindenberg.