Bigging up

Lord Patten on Trevor Kavanagh, November 2011: "Trevor Kavanagh is plainly one of the outstanding political writers of his generation".

Trevor Kavanagh on Lord Patten, October 2012: "Chris Patten IS Lord Smug! As a former Cabinet minister, EU Commissioner and Governor of Hong Kong he is the great panjandrum of the “We Know Best” brigade....

The so-called BBC Trust, set up by Labour, are supposed to act as troubleshooter and guardian of good corporate conduct.

Lord Patten sits atop this empire as chairman while juggling other jobs as Chancellor of Oxford University and lucrative directorships, including the troubled BP. His key role — the reason he was appointed — is to seize command at potentially devastating moments of crisis and deploy his vast experience in defence of the corporation.

Savile’s “Tsunami of Filth” is precisely that sort of crisis. Patten’s job as leader was to step in on Day One, immerse himself in the facts, and act as the commanding face and voice of the BBC Trust. Instead, he stoked the blaze with stupid swipes at Government ministers, left hapless new Director General George Entwistle to swing in the wind and revealed to the world that the Trust and everything they stand for are a pointless waste of space.

Lord Smug must go".