What the threat to Laura Kuenssberg says about the country we live in

For perfectly understandable reasons, neither she nor her employers want to talk about it, but the fact that Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC is covering the Labour Party conference in Brighton accompanied by a bodyguard is an outrage that has not been greeted with the anger and disgust it merits.

Imagine, for a second, if you heard this story – first revealed by Charles Moore in The Spectator earlier this year – about a foreign country. Imagine a country where a journalist could not go about the basic task of reporting a political meeting without fear of physical attack. Would you consider that country to be a fully functioning democracy?

Britain would – and does – chide ‘developing’ nations in Africa, Asia and South America for failing to safeguard the free media and ensure journalists’ ability to report the words and deeds of people in power, such that voters can hold those people to account.