Were journos to blame for Smeargate?

The keys to the system are held by journalists. It is only through the collusion of journalists that underhand and anonymous attacks on political colleagues can have any effect.

writes Alice Miles in what is surely a controversial piece in the Times this morning.

For Alice the keys mentioned were the fact that concerning Damien McBride and his smear campaign,those keys were

We may not have known the detail of the nasty smears about senior Conservatives that Mr McBride was dreaming up, but we knew about the smears against his own side. We knew what he was up to, and we knew that he was being paid more than £100,000 a year of public money to do it – and we did nothing to stop it.

Time then to do away with the lobby system then