Know Your Enemy

"I am concerned that the effect of what you say might be that you are in fact taking the view that behaviour which everybody so far in this inquiry has said is unacceptable, albeit not necessarily criminal, has to be accepted because of the right of freedom of speech."

Lord Justice Leveson takes a suitably dim view of Michael Gove's attempt to defend the excesses of the press under the pretext of protecting freedom of speech. The pair had a right old ding-dong, with Gove insisting that regulation wasn't necessarily the answer - because, of course, self-regulation has been such a roaring success.

As the BBC's Vicki Young has suggested, former Times journo Gove's general stance and his brown-nosing description of Rupert Murdoch ("one of the most impressive and significant figures of the last 50 years") seems calculated to curry favour with the right-wing press ahead of a possible Tory leadership push. Cynical behaviour from a politician? Surely not.