MAIL COMMENT: What Clarke's latest salvo really tells us

Charles Clarke's intervention in the debate on the future of the Labour party would be taken much more seriously if he had not been one of the worst Home Secretaries of modern times; a man who left his department in such disarray that his successor John Reid famously described it as 'not fit for purpose'.

Since leaving, his contribution has been limited to carping from the sidelines, and yesterday was no different, as he offered no solutions to the Government's growing unpopularity.

And yet, his outburst was significant, because he said in public what many Labour politicians are expressing in private: that the Government is in a mess, and that Gordon Brown must either turn the situation around soon, or face more significant calls for his departure.

Effortlessly overshadowing the Prime Minister's first public speech since July, this latest venomous attack also reminded everyone that the Labour party is now fixated not on governing Britain, but on its own petty internal squabbles.

Coming in the same week as Brown's drop-in-the-ocean housing package, and a forecast from the OECD showing the British economy careering faster than any other European country towards the buffers, we can only hope that it will serve as yet another incentive to ministers to stop squabbling and start really trying to rescue the country.

The biased Beeb

So the hockey mum hit her detractors for six. In a barnstorming speech, US Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who has had a torrid time in the press, added a fizzing excitement to what was already the most electrifying presidential campaign of modern times.

If she does get to Washington, they won't know what's hit them. And while the mawkish use of her family to bolster her image may not be to everyone's taste, we can only welcome a refreshing new voice to the US political scene.

Or at least, most of us can. Yet the BBC, despite its supposed obligation to report the news impartially, seems to find Mrs Palin a little hard to digest.

First Newsnight failed to find a single Palin supporter to interview, then on the same show Emily Maitlis announced that 'millions of Americans' didn't think she was up to the job, for which she'd been chosen because she was 'photogenic'.

Taking up the baton on the Today programme yesterday, presenter Jim Naughtie largely ignored her hugely successful speech  -  which he described inaccurately as 'sharp' and 'tart'  -  and instead spent his time arguing that McCain had reluctantly accepted her as his deputy to appease the religious right.

What a contrast with the almost religious reverence with which the BBC covered Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention last week.

It becomes ever harder to predict who will win this increasingly exciting contest, but one thing is for sure. When it comes to impartiality in its news coverage, the Corporation is a non-runner.

The truth . . . at last?

After years of prevarication and dissimilation, and the death of Dr David Kelly, we may finally be close to discovering why Britain went to war in Iraq.

The Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, has ruled that ministers must publish details of the changes made to the intelligence dossier that made the case for war in the final days before its publication.

Alastair Campbell has always denied 'sexing up' the dossier, but ministers have refused to publish the evidence that would prove or disprove his claims. Now, thanks to the Commissioner's principled stand, the truth may at last come out.