Paper Monitor
13:27 UK time, Thursday, 22 July 2010
A service highlighting the riches the daily press.
Paper Monitor feels sorry for Nick Clegg. Paper Monitor has bad days at the office, too - admittedly, more often involving lateness and jammed paper feeds rather than .
But then Paper Monitor's every minor blunder is not subject to the scrutiny of Fleet Street's waspish parliamentary sketchwriters (although Simon Hoggart is more than welcome to visit Magazine HQ and file a dispatch).
Mr Clegg's description of the Iraq war as "illegal" while standing in for David Cameron at prime minister's questions was, says Andrew Gimson in the Daily Telegraph, a "serious unforced error".
The deputy prime minister then went on to proclaim the closure of the Yarl's Wood detention centre, an announcement later clarified by the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Office to the effect that it was not actually closing.
"Perhaps," wonders Mr Gimson, "Mr Clegg was just being loyal to the Coalition, and to Mr Cameron, by giving nobody the chance to say that the Prime Minister was outshone by his deputy."
Ann Treneman of the Times, likewise, relaxes, kicks off her heels and savours the moment.
I felt sorry for the Chilcott inquiry, labouring away across the road, calling witnesses, sifting through reams of evidence, asking spies what they think.
And that's just among papers broadly sympathetic to the coalition.
"It was like Shakin' Stevens being asked to fill in for Elvis," tuts Jason Beattie of the Daily Mirror, not a newspaper normally given to comparing the prime minister to the world's most iconic rock star. Unless Mr Beattie was talking about the Vegas years.
There was a cross-party note to the chaos - Jack Straw, deputising for Labour's acting leader Harriet Harman at the dispatch box, did not cover himself in glory with a verbose line of questioning that, in Mr Gimson's reckoning, characterised the shadow justice secretary as a "windbag".
Still, at least Quentin Letts of the Daily Mail is chuffed:
PMQs with Cleggy was, delightfully, a stop-start shambles. It renewed one's faith in the duffness of the British Establishment.All this recent stuff with the Coalition had given rise to a vague impression of competence. How good to have one's trust in partisan cack-handedness restored.
The 
