When the centre goes berserk

Over at the Leveson inquiry a smug Lord Patten – there is no other kind — said the BBC could not possibly be biased because left wingers attack it on some occasions and right wingers attack it on others. The BBC holds the ring, he implied. Uncontaminated by the ideologies of extremists, and possessing indeed no bias or ideology of its own, it speaks for moderation and reason.

Although true, the argument that apparently moderate and reasonable people can be more ideological than extremists is ordinarily a hard one to make. Given the crisis in the eurozone perhaps even Patten can grasp that the centre ground offers no protection against deranged ideas.

Support for the euro was the mark of moderate men for almost two decades. No one seemed more reasonable than Patten when, as a former EU commissioner, he advocated policies that would lead Europe to ruin.