NATION IN GRIP OF NEW WITCH HYSTERIA

No doubt I'm not alone in starting to feel sorry for Rebekah Brooks; even if  I don't regard the latest cover of Private Eye to be in bad taste. The idea that the police should try to prevent its sale by a street vendor near the Old Bailey, where Mrs Brooks in currently on trial for phone hacking and corruption amongst other things, seems ridiculous. Nevertheless, I do think the nation has become gripped by a sort of witch hysteria, and what better day than Halloween to discuss this subject.

Mrs Brooks has wielded much power in her day, and many may be surprised that her secret consort was only former Downing Street spin doctor Andy Coulson and not the Prince of Darkness himself. However, her main crime now, it seems to me, is to be a non-establishment figure who has been dropped by former powerful friends as fast as a red hot poker. The lady herself, I suspect, may regret that her talents weren't sort out by the security services where her actions would have been rewarded.

Indeed, had Mrs Brooks made a career of espionage, supervising acts of surveillance and other nefarious activities, she may well have landed a peerage. Instead, in what has been described as "the trial of the century" she stands accused of offences which may have been common practice in the media, and, dare I suggest, other walks of public life. Like earlier witch hunters, the latest ones "protesteth too much", in the hope, no doubt, of hiding their own dark secrets.