Fair, balanced and impartial Ian Katz will have no trouble fitting in at his new role as Newsnight editor. He is reunited with former Guardian colleague Allegra Stratton and, in Paul Mason, he has an ex-Trotskyist Workers’ Power group member as his Economics Editor. Despite being a neighbour of Boris, Katz certainly has top drawer left-wing credentials. Back in 2004, he was editor of the Guardian’s G2 magazine during their infamous ‘Operation Clark County’ plot to swing the state of Ohio in favour of John Kerry and against George W. Bush. Katz organised thousands of letters written by lefty Britons to be sent to individual voters in Ohio, imploring them to cast their ballot for Kerry. The result was uproar, a near diplomatic incident, and victory for Bush. Slate magazine explained Katz’s humiliation at the time:

“The Guardian editor responsible for the project, Ian Katz, finally wrote a piece on Oct. 21 crying uncle… Katz said he knew all along that the letter-writing project could backfire. So, did it? Almost certainly, yes. In 2000, Al Gore won Clark County by 324 votes. And since Ralph Nader received 1,347 votes, we can assume Gore’s margin would have been larger without Nader on the ballot.

On Tuesday George Bush won Clark County by 1,620 votes.”

Add to that Katz’s support for various barmy climate change schemes, including the exploding children shock campaign 10:10. Throw in his views on the ‘paranoia’ and ‘complicity’ of ‘idiotic’ Israel and you start to get the picture…