When the press quivers before the powerful, no one benefits. Except, of course, the powerful

Imagine living in a country where a politician could not only force a newspaper to retract a report but could then make it publish an alternative report on its front page. That would be a bad place to live, right? It would be a place where the relationship between the press and politicians — where the former is supposed to keep in check the latter, not the other way round — had been twisted beyond repair. It would be a country in which pressmen and women would be always on edge, fearful that if they were too stinging or scurrilous about a political player then they, too, might be forced into a humiliating climbdown. And no one benefits when the press quivers before the powerful. Except, of course, the powerful.

Well, I’m afraid to tell you that, if you’re a British-based reader of the Spectator website, you already live in this country.