Everyone's noticing the decline of The Spectator Magazine. Peter Cuthbertson wrote a post about it about a week ago; Melanie Phillips yesterday quoted Denis Boyles in NRO extensively and approvingly about the Speccie's decline. Samizdata had a go a bit further back; and I've thought it for months. Evidently I was far from alone.

The Speccie, in an uncoincidental echo of the BBC, today often mistakes triteness for opinion. Most of the BBC output is half-baked intellectually, intended mainly to massage or manipulate public opinion (often at a quite sophisticated level) and set the media agenda. It's almost wholly politicised and makes little appeal to the intellect. The wider British media has to realise that, party-political affiliations aside, you can't introduce trite and politicised ideas into the 'news' without devaluing the whole news output of an organisation. That's what the Spectator magazine has been doing too often under the guise of 'balance', the worst examples probably being serial shallow thinkers like Gilligan (who could ever forget him?) and Liddle, who have often been known to match their shallowness with dishonesty.

I'm sure everyone has also noticed where the fault lies, but no-one wants to put the boot into cuddly Boris Johnson, hoping that someone else will do it instead.