Pots and kettles
Sir: Mr Alexander Chancellor (Notebook, 4 February) can dish it out but he evidently can't take it, for his much-protesting complaint about my attack on him during the House of Commons debate on Reuters is a classic case of the journalistic pot trying to blacken the political kettle.
Your readers will recall that in the course of his long-winded campaign against the flotation of Reuters Mr Chancellor has not hesitated to attack, often in robust ad hominem terms, individual managers, shareholders, and newspaper publishers. How strange that his skin should be so much thinner than theirs. Perhaps he needs `a horribly well tailored suit'.
Stranger still is Mr Chancellor's statement: 'I could speculate, but will not, about why Mr Aitken is so desperately keen for the Reuters flotation to go ahead'. Since I made it clear in the debate that I have no financial interests whatsoever in Reuters (the opposite of the obvious inference to be drawn from his Notebook remarks) I challenge Mr Chancellor to be more forthcoming about his mysterious speculations. Surely an editor who has been so busy exhorting others to uphold journalistic integrity could not be stooping to the old gutter press technique of being willing to wound by smear and yet afraid to strike with facts? I think we should be told.
Jonathan Aitken MP
House of Commons, London SW1
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