Quintin Jardine's blog

One might think that News International would know when to regroup, but no. Under attack on several fronts by the last Prime Minister, the Sun chose today to lead with a defence of its publication of a story about the medical condition of Mr and Mrs Brown’s younger son. They deny that it was obtained by illegal means and that it was brought to them by a ‘member of the public’, and go on to set out chapter and verse of the exchange with Brown’s office that followed. Give up people, you’re the bloody Sun, and we all know that nothing you do is about morality, but is for one end alone, namely the lining of the pockets of Rupert Murdoch, presumably so that he can continue to pay for the services of the blonde personal trainer who seems to have been at his side from the moment he arrived in London. It’s as simple as this; you’ve shattered the right of an infant to medical confidentiality. You’ve put the poor kid in a goldfish bowl, and it’s no use saying that the Browns approved the story, if they did, because we all know you’d have run it anyway.

If it’s any consolation, such are the preferences of the average Sun reader that the Brown story ranks only Number 5 on today’s most-read online stories, behind, in order, a £162m lottery winner, a potential football transfer, a picture special about the girlfriend of another footballer, and a piece under  the headline ‘Hermione Granger and the Chamber of Pole Dancers’, which claims that the Harry Potter actress Emma Watson went partying after the New York premiere of the last movie in a club where there were poles for dancing on, but didn’t actually mount one herself. Classy, yes?