Perhaps it’s important who owns the Telegraph group and perhaps it isn’t. We tend to go with the idea that a free press does mean that government doesn’t get to decide who can be part of that free press but maybe that’s just us.

However, we really don’t think this is the way that the decision should be taken:

A Whitehall battle over the sale of the Telegraph newspapers could break out owing to a power vacuum created by the absence of the cabinet secretary, the Guardian understands.

Efforts by the culture department to investigate an Abu Dhabi-backed bid for the newspaper group risk being steamrolled by the Foreign Office, which is eager to bolster Britain’s relations with the United Arab Emirates, sources said.

Senior figures at the Foreign Office had already sought to “take the edge off” a letter from Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, in which she laid out her intention to have the bid examined by Ofcom, sources claimed.

But with no cabinet secretary to intervene in a potential squabble between departments, as Simon Case is on medical leave, scrutiny of the deal could “fall through the cracks”, it has been claimed.

A clash of competing egos really might not be that optimal decision making method.

But then that’s what politics is, isn’t it. Therefore, politics isn;t the optimal decision making method except forthose very few decisions that can be taken no other way. Like, say, deciding whow makes sure the bins get collected. Therefore the influence of politics, of government, which takes decisions in this manner should be limited to only those things that cannot be done any other way - like said bins.

The world would such a better place if only politics were put back into its box and limited to where it is actually necessary. The rest of it we can all get on with ourselves, free and at liberty. No?