Neil O’Brien at Open Europe spotted that the Indy cover story this morning was lifted entirely from an FCO briefing paper.

Guido called the Indy newsroom looking for Andrew Grice, the political editor who had the accompanying story, to be told he was not available. So I asked who was responsible for cutting and pasting the press release. “Brrr…” – they slammed the phone down.

There must be terrible telecoms problems at the Indy. The Speccie gave the editor of the Indy three hours to respond to their inquiries. Silencio.

The CoffeeHouse blog broke the story. When Blair said the Indy was a viewspaper not a newspaper, you can bet he never imagined it would be the government’s views spread over three pages. Not so bloody piously independent today…