The Spectator’s notes | 12 April 2008

The opinions of the Sun newspaper are not noted for nuance, so it has been interesting to follow its unusually careful choice of words about the Olympic torch on its way to China. On Monday, under the headline ‘Freedom Wins’, the leading article called the fact that the torch managed, though with difficulty, to continue its relay through London ‘a triumph for democracy’. It claimed that the British government was speaking out for human rights in China and Tibet, and ran a line presumably planted by the government about how Mr Brown would meet the Dalai Lama next month. It declared that the torch stands for ‘peace, friendship and unity’. It did not comment on the weird, violent Chinese guardians of the flame — actually the People’s Armed Police — who surrounded it. The next day, after the torch had been put out three or four times (accounts differ) in Paris and was then hurried away in a bus, the Sun said that each country through which the flame passes ‘owes a duty to the Olympic legacy to keep it burning.