KEN Clarke last night lambasted the "lynch mob" mentality that is forcing Cabinet colleagues such as Jeremy Hunt and Sayeeda Warsi to defend themselves against claims they broke the ministerial code.
While Mr Hunt appears to have survived his appearance before the Leveson Inquiry over his quasi-judicial role in the failed £8 billion bid for BSkyB by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, few at Westminster believe he will remain as Culture Secretary following an expected late-summer reshuffle.
Baroness Warsi is facing an inquiry by Sir Alex Allan, the Prime Minister's adviser on the ministerial code, who is looking into the Conservative co-chairman's official trip to Pakistan in July 2010 when she was accompanied by business partner Abid Hussain.
Mr Clarke last night said that he was "not terribly happy about the fairness of some of this".
The Justice Secretary stressed it was quite right that ministers were put under close scrutiny but decried how there was a "bit of a fashion at the moment" in which the media was "working through my colleagues, trying to find things to complain about".
He branded some of the claims against Baroness Warsi as "pedantic" and "silly", noting: "It does sometimes become a bit of a lynch mob, racing about finding extraordinary things to complain about."
Saying that he expected the Culture Secretary to remain in his job "unless something more startling comes out", Mr Clarke stressed Mr Hunt and Lady Warsi were "perfectly straightforward people".
He added: "If they were in any other walk of life they would not be being subjected to this kind of thing... I trust both of them are going to clear themselves."
Earlier, David Cameron defended his decision not to refer the Culture Secretary to Sir Alex while he did so with Lady Warsi, saying they were "two very different cases".
He said he called in his ministerial adviser simply to clear up "any loose ends... It's no more than that".
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