Unraked Muck

In the run-up to the 2005 Election, The Observer alone made anything of the fact that, as Home Secretary, Michael Howard had arranged Royal Pardons for his violent, drug-dealing cousins in Swansea. The whole of the mainstream media knew about it, but we were treated, on things like Today, to columnists from the right-wing papers denouncing “muckraking” over “Mr Howard’s family”. No one was so uncouth as to drop so much as a hint to the voting, license-paying public as to what that “muck” might be.

So this morning’s revelation, also in The Observer, that Howard did much the same thing for rather similar low-life in Liverpool will probably also be kept for ever out of the consciousness of the public at large. No one must ever realise that Howard’s reputation bears absolutely no resemblance to his record, not least because any such realisation would expose the true character of the coup against Iain Duncan Smith (now, I am not at all surprised to learn, apparently a weekly columnist on The Big Issue).

And then there is the identity of Howard’s Special Adviser at the time, and the ultimate beneficiary of the anti-IDS putsch. In case you have not guessed, his name is David Cameron.