The Times today has another exclusive which is likely to remain exclusive. They claim Nigel Farage is planning to abandon it in favour of a new life in the United States. Nigel says it is “utter nonsense”.

This is of a pattern, in the last week alone we have had; the “Deloitte Cabinet Brexit Memo” that turned out to be nothing of the sort, the Whitehall think tank that The Times reported as warning Brexit was an “existential threat” that angrily denied making the warning. The thread that ties all this lapsing into fake news is that they are anti-Brexit and UKIP.

There is a difference between having news with views, readers can deal with a publication having a slant, most manifestly do even if they claim to be independent. In a free society The Times is entitled to be Europhile, just as it was entitled to be pro-appeasement in the 1930s. The pattern of recent fake news from the paper is of a kind that suggests journalists are under pressure from the editor to create stories that fit the agenda. If they fall apart on publication the fake news isn’t advancing the editor’s agenda, it is just damaging the paper’s reputation…