Hostile commentators are generating more heat than light

It is becoming a wearingly familiar pattern: Boris Johnson opens another conference by setting out the Herculean efforts being taken to save lives from Covid-19, the eminent experts flanking him are primed to chip in with illuminating background details about what has informed government policy and then the nation’s broadcast political editors get their say.

And another round of “The Gotchas” begins as they compete to be the one who throws the Government’s strategy for communicating with the British public at this dangerous and profoundly worrying time into the most chaos.

Holding up the actions of the Government to scrutiny is, of course, the lifeblood of political journalism in a free society.

But surely there are times when a wider sense of social responsibility should kick in and when the faces we see on our TV news programmes night after night should consider not behaving like would-be prosecuting counsels let loose on a snivelling defendant in the dock?

On Wednesday the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg led the way with a “can you really say the Government is coping?” litany of alleged shortcomings. Sky’s Beth Rigby was next out of the blocks, focusing on the shortage of coronavirus testing capacity and the tone was once again set for the whole shebang.