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Blog: Following the criticism of a pro-establishment Guardian leader in yesterday’s post by Antigone1984, the Guardian announced today that its leader writer is leaving the “liberal” paper. Julian Glover, who has also contributed a number of rightwing articles to the Guardian, is to become chief speech writer to Tory Prime Minister David Cameron. Glover’s reactionary articles were a puzzle to many Guardian readers, who could not understand why he was writing for the Guardian, not the Daily Telegraph. What the bulk of readers will not have realized is that Guardian leaders were also written by Glover. Newspaper leading articles have no name attached to them but are supposed to reflect the newspaper’s own view of events. It now seems to be becoming clearer why recent editorials, including the one on Afghanistan criticised yesterday by Antigone1984, were so at variance with the paper’s vaunted liberalism.  Commenting on Glover’s departure into the bowels of the Tory machine, Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief at the paper, commented:”It’s a loss for the Guardian, but we can understand the prime minister wanting to poach such a sharp thinker.” So here we have the Guardian’s editor-in-chief bemoaning the loss of a patently rightwing leader writer. We at Antigone1984 have long considered that the Guardian as an institution forms an integral part of the rightwing media caucus. Some, but certainly not all, of its writers could be described as being on the left, but the paper itself is essentially a part of the conservative media establishment with a built-in bias towards the status quo. The outing of the rightwing Glover as Guardian leader writer rams home this point only too clearly. We ought to make one point clear, none the less. Since leaders are anonymous, of course, we cannot know for certain that it was Glover who penned the Afghanistan editorial in question.