The New Statesman’s decision to hire Alastair Campbell as a guest editor has prompted much fury this week from media people who still hate him for his part in removing Saddam Hussein from power.

I don’t read the New Statesman and I rather like Campbell anyway, so I had no problem with his guest editor spot. The generally wonderful Suzanne Moore did, and she resigned. Others have vowed to cancel their subscriptions and so on.

I normally admire people for taking principled stands, even when I disagree with them. But there have been far better reasons to quit the New Statesman in recent years. Such as when it sneered at the dead of 9/11, or when it further exploited its own poorly-paid writers, taking the whole operation to little more than vanity publishing.

Or, for that matter, when it published this antisemitic cover. It would have been nice to have seen some principled stands then.