The left might not believe it, but The Guardian was morally wrong

The Guardian seems to be hurt that larger selling Fleet Street newspapers (ie almost all of them) have not rallied to its side since Andrew Parker, the boss of MI5, stuck the boot in. Parker eviscerated the North London local paper for publishing material stolen by Edward Snowden, which he said had given a ‘gift’ to terrorists lurking within our midst. It amounted to, he said, the ‘greatest damage to western security in history’ and was ‘hugely harmful’. The Grauniad cheerfully published various details relating to our own information gathering centre, GCHQ, without giving a monkey’s as to the possible ramifications. Of course, it did the same with the indiscriminate screeds of data purloined by that other self-serving narcissist, Julian Assange.

In The Guardian, John Kampfner wonders if the failure of other papers to support Rusbridger’s ailing rag is ‘payback for Leveson’. Well, The Guardian’s crass hypocrisy over Leveson – supporting state control of the press and acting all appalled about phone hacking, and yet being a party to hacking of an even more damaging kind – does rankle a little, I suppose. But the main reason everyone else objected is simply that they think that what The Guardian did was morally wrong. But the liberal left cannot ever imagine itself being morally wrong.