Through the winter of 2011-12, police dragged dozens of journalists from their beds in terrorist-style dawn raids. It was the beginning of a four-year nightmare; a politically motivated witch-hunt triggered, I believe, by a former state prosecutor who today presides as Britain’s Prime Minister.
So I was astonished when Sir Keir Starmer popped up in my old newspaper, the Sun, recently to say: “This is a government that will always champion press freedoms.”
Starmer did not think twice before putting innocent journalists in the dock. Yet he claims now that journalism “is the lifeblood of democracy”
It was news to the men and women he dragged through the highest courts in the land, all of whom were declared innocent. Their “crime”, it seems, was to publish true stories that were embarrassing to the Labour governments of Tony Blair and, especially, Sir Keir’s pal Gordon Brown.
Every story was checked and verified. Many, including the government’s neglect of soldiers fighting for their country, were invariably in the public interest.
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