How Discgate has let Blair and Smith off the hook

Here are two people who will be breathing easier today.


It's a fact of life that the media only ever have room for one big scandal. There can only be one 'top story' which obsesses them, and brings out their periodic ability to ferret out interesting and embarassing truths.

But one unfortunate side-effect of this is that when there are several big stories at the same, some people get off too lightly.

It seems that the current massive 'Discgate' scandal, which looks set to rumble on for a while, has taken the pressure of two people who were in a quite a pickle before all this kicked off.

Ian Blair. Who presided over a series of failures in basic policing which led to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. He then tried to deliberately obstruct the investigation of the IPCC. He has just escaped a vote of no confidence by the Met.

That's like Genghis Khan getting the thumbs-up from a band of marauding Mongols. Nevertheless it looks like he's survived.

Jacqui Smith. Whose Department allowed huge numbers of illegal immigrants to work in government security posts and arguably misled Parliament about it.

No one's talking about that any more. Lucky her.

The Opposition would do well not to forget this. Because together it starts to make a compelling case for an arrogant and incompetent government who have let standards slip and failed to fulfil basic governmental responsibilities.

Let's hope McLaren's sacking doesn't push Darling and Brown off the front pages for too long...