Douglas Murray Douglas Murray

Who is more powerful: a backbench MP or Alan Rusbridger?

Well Alan Rusbridger has certainly received a glowing review from his own newspaper for his appearance in Parliament yesterday. In a moving paen, Roy Greenslade today describes how his boss ‘was able to bat away MPs’ concerns without raising a sweat, despite bluster from a couple of them who sought to suggest he might be guilty of breaching the Terrorism Act.’ Which, if it is true, says more about the MPs than it does about Rusbridger.

As it happens, I don’t know why some of the Select Committee MPs went into some of the cul-de-sacs they did. Why the ‘outing’ of the sexuality of some people working at GCHQ should have been such a prominent issue for Michael Ellis I do not know. It is possible that the MP presumed that the editor of the Guardian would be more easily embarrassed about outing someone as gay than about spreading the identities of British agents abroad. Ellis may well be right in this assumption but it did not lead him to the strongest line of questioning.

At any rate, the main charge against Rusbridger – that he and his paper scattered this country’s intelligence secrets around the globe – remains. Of course there are many who think that the whole business of calling the editor of the Guardian to account before Parliament for his war against the security service is a serious case of lese majeste. And you can see their point. Between a back-bench MP and the editor of the Guardian there is no doubt about who has the most power. Aside from anything else, if a backbench MP fiddles their expenses they can go to prison.

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