Emmanuel Macron’s vaccine muddle

In 2000, this magazine dipped its toe in murky Irish water. Stephen Glover wrote three articles, one provocatively entitled ‘The Republican cell at the heart of the Guardian’. (For more detail, see Douglas Murray’s article.) One of the IRA supporters identified was Roy Greenslade, the paper’s media commentator. Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian’s editor, wrote angrily to the then editor, Boris Johnson, demanding an apology. Boris refused. Now Greenslade has emerged from that murky water, with an armalite in one dripping hand, and admitted he always secretly supported IRA violence and was close to IRA leaders. Where does his admitted ‘entryism’ leave the Guardian? I understand that Alan Rusbridger, editor from 1995 to 2015, insists he did not know about Greenslade’s deception and that, if he had, he would have got rid of him. The Guardian has an interesting excuse for its inattention. Consulting Tony Blair, Mo Mowlam, security sources etc, Rusbridger was assured the IRA was to be trusted. This does not, of course, explain any Guardian leniency towards Greenslade before Blair’s victory in 1997 (think of the 1996 Canary Wharf bomb, for instance), but it does point to something else. From 1997, Glover was so struck by Greenslade’s closeness to Blair’s head of communications, Alastair Campbell, that he invented a ‘pantomime horse’ called Mr Campbell-Greenslade. Did the Campbell half of the horse know what the Greenslade half was up to? If so, did he support it? If not, does he feel betrayed?

A reader sends a photo of the Scotland Act 1998 still proudly displayed inside the Scottish parliament. It is open at the title page, inscribed to Donald Dewar, the first First Minister of Scotland: ‘To Donald — it was a struggle; it may always be hard; but it was worth it.