Essentials

Axel Springer? No, no, no. Telegraph hacks need to know that the Mail paid their wages. They need to be told it wherever and whenever possible. In November, Mike Wood, who as the Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office would not ordinary have been an active participant in PMQs, used it to call for the Telegraph to be nationalised. He had been Parliamentary Private Secretary to Liam Fox, Priti Patel and Dominic Raab, so that was what the Right openly wanted.

I have been laughing for nearly two years. Could anything have been funnier than the Daily Telegraph begging the State for protection from the "free" market? Yes, there was one thing even more amusing than that. A Conservative Government delivered it. By Statute. The press must be so free that you needed the Government's permission to part-own it. If these publications were this important, then they could not possibly be allowed to go bust, so we are going to be picking up the tab when they otherwise would. You read it here first, as you very often do.