Stephen Tall

Well, there’s a turn-up for the books — the Mail on Sunday in its first post-Leveson front page decides to play the man (and woman) rather than the ball, and splash on a desperately thin story implying some form of scandalous link between Miriam González Durántez’s support for Booktrust and the charity being given a government grant.

The paper’s baseless accusations get short shrift from the Lib Dems in this statement issued by the party tonight:

The decision to continue the funding for Booktrust was made by the Prime Minister and the Education Secretary because it is the only organisation capable of delivering children’s books and literacy support on this scale, on this budget.

Any suggestion that Miriam’s support for the charity influenced that decision is obviously without foundation.

Miriam has no role with the charity, beyond being supportive of its excellent work and having hosted a reception for the organisation. It is a great pity that Miriam is apparently unable to offer her support to a charity without some newspapers resorting to these kind of smears and innuendo.

* Stephen Tall is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, a Research Associate for the liberal think-tank CentreForum, and also writes at his own site, The Collected Stephen Tall.