Who would risk being a government adviser?

Poor Tony Abbott. It would seem being prime minister of Australia doesn’t bring you to the attention of the British media. To come into its sights you must be put forward for a role as UK trade adviser. Then they will discover your existence and aim to destroy whatever reputation they didn’t know you had with the usual modern British charge-sheet.

This time the charge was led by Kay Burley. The latest advertisements for her Sky television show boast that Burley is ‘always formidable, rigorous, fair, honest and searching’, among much else. Perhaps Burley hadn’t seen the advert. Certainly she displayed no such qualities when she discovered the existence of Tony Abbott. She immediately asserted — didn’t prove, just asserted — that Abbott is a homophobe, a misogynist, a climate-change denier and wishes to kill the elderly. She then spent the next couple of days pursuing this line of attack (in a ‘fair’ and ‘honest’ manner, obviously) until Abbott’s appointment was confirmed late last Friday evening.