Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Both Boris Johnson in the Telegraph and Hamish McRae in the "feral" Independent respond to Blair's speech on the media, and both end up emphasising the democratic nature of the web and the blogosphere. Johnson's is highly enjoyable knockabout prose at its best. He gets Blair's bad faith in complaining about a degeneration of media values that he above all orchestrated in Britain. As we're going personal, what Johnson and, it seems, no one else has spotted is the other aspect of Blair's motive in making the speech. He is not kicking the media just because it criticises him, but because he has been the master of its management. Like an old boxer he was addicted to being hit and hurt as well as mixing it, the pain of martyrdom was part of the pleasure of the job for him. At the same time he loved winning his bouts with the press even more, softening blows, heading off attacks, suborning columnists. He made it a non-stop part of his job. He loved what he complained about - mixing news and views! Now all this is slipping away. It's not the power he'll miss most but his conjuring a good headline out of a bad day. As the game goes, so his reputation will no longer be judged on his performance on the night but on the facts of his decade, not least Iraq. Meanwhile, Gordon and others will get the coverage. Hence the need to hit back now to protect his legacy from those who will "tear it to pieces" as they will: it's called a pre-emptive attack, another example of liberal interventionism in the cause of all that is good against the wicked forces that threaten us.
As for the wisdom of the web that Johnson and McRea prey to their aid, its not so simple. The democracy of the web is just as two-edged as the free press, there is no easy way of holding it to account. They both seem a long way from grasping the unified nature of the media torrent which the web extends and accelerates.
