There are certain arguments which, despite their flawed logic, remain staples of low-rent political commentary. The king of these follows the formula: "I don't need/like/approve of x, so why am I forced to fund it with my taxes?"

"As a lifelong non-smoker, why should the NHS use my money to pay for cancer treatments for smokers?"

"I'm a catholic, and find it problematic that my money funds contraception and abortion."

"I'm a pacifist, and am uncomfortable paying for military actions I disagree with."

However libertarian your opinion on the maintenace of common public goods, or the morality of enforcing laws which offend deeply held beleifs, religious or otherwise, society provides no mechanism for opting out of taxation.

Except that it kind of does, if you're rich enough.

Much has been made of the wheels of the Tory communication machine having fallen off in the absence of Coulson and Hilton, and the charity cap has been a message management mishap of Iannucian proportions. The unlikely, but probably unintentional result of this particular framing contest is that Labour have been led into of defending an essentially right-wing position.

Taken in isolation the cap on tax relief for charitable donations is profoundly socialist in nature. It removes, or at least reduces the ability of the super rich to abstain from funding government spending of which they disapprove, in favour of the individual's favoured projects. Put in more inflammatory language, as suggested by Nick Robinson, it makes it possible to take money away from the NHS and give it to the Opera.

Tony Blair's arguments today in defence of philanthropy ignore this problem. Hammering out the truism that government is not the sole means of effecting change, before listing the good deeds of himself and his friends, he fails to address the parts of our tax code which allow the philanthropic sector to dash to the opposite extreme. As Blair says, there are "things that only government can do and reforms only government can enable" - meaning that a fully rounded society must contribute both to charity and to the communal pot.

This truly weird reversal of positions was finely illustrated on Newsnight, with Baroness Warsi arguing exactly this point, even if she did need to bring a copy of the Conservative Manifesto with her as some kind of paper security blanket.

Obviously the big picture matters here. The importance of charitable giving in a time of government retrenchment requires little explanation and the cap will doubtless lead to a reduction in giving. And from a redistribution-of-wealth perspective, the "take with one hand" of the charity cap has to be seen in the context of the "give with the other" of the 50p rate cut.

But within the larger canvas of political strategy, this has been a bizarre episode of policy communication. An expertly botched budget has led not to car crash radio interviews and eventual u-turns, but to an effective reversal of the political spectrum. A cynic might suggest this has been a devious plot by the Government to lead Labour into an unsustainable position, at odds with their base and their beliefs.. More likely, as suggested by Douglas Carswell MP, is that this is the result of the treasury allowing the civil service to dominate policymaking - and what Tim Montgomerie terms "Yes Ministerism."

Bizarre as the whole episode has been, however, the worst damage has been done to the image of the big-hearted philanthropist. The sight of wealthy men and their lawyers threatening to withdraw their charitable donations unless they could keep their tax breaks was frankly shameful. Perhaps one day we'll all live in Tony Blair's world, where philanthropy is a steely determination to improve the world in new, creative and exciting ways. Something to be celebrated, and rewarding for those who practice it. Its own reward.

At the same time, rather than railing against policy after policy in isolation, Labour need to do more to explain the whole picture to the whole country.

The Sky News Press Preview programme this evening contained an awkward moment. First on the list was the channel's admission that it hacked the emails of John Darwin, who faked his own death in a canoe, and his wife Anne with whom he conspired to defraud their insurance company.

Predictably, both Eve Pollard and Stephen Pound MP agreed with presenter Anna Botting that the hacking had been authorised because it was "in the public interest" and that if the media didn't feel able to break the law now and again, we wouldn't have had Watergate, or some other tired excuse.

Common sense tells us that there are genuine public interest reasons for journalists to break the law. Of course there are. But if we take a minute to work out what "the public interest" actually means, beyond a convenient excuse for editorial laziness and unethical practices, it becomes clear that hacking John Darwin's emails is not covered.

It's undeniable that the outcome of the Darwin case was positive. Criminals were caught, and were punished for thier crimes. As a bonus, the media were gifted a truly fantastic story. The £1/2m insurance fraud. The canoe. The beard. It all added up to a wonderful, "what the fuck?" piece of news.

But when considering whether breaking the law to fully investigate the story was in the public interest, we have to look beyond the outcomes, and consider the process and motives for the hack. If you're authorising something in the public interest, it has to be in the public interest from the very beginning. If you're going to hack the emails of a private citizen, there has to be a reasonable expectation that the information therein will expose something fresh. Something not only newsworthy, but for the good of public at large.

In this case, the couple had already been caught and were awaiting trial. The emails were passed to the police, and Sky says the cache of emails was intended to help defeat Anne Darwin's defence. But her husband had already pleaded guilty and convicted of seven counts of deception, so how much help did prosecutors really need? At the time when the hack took place, it's difficult to see how Sky's Simon Cole, who authorised the hack, could have considered this to be anything beyond a fishing expedition to see if there was anything juicy in there to give the story even more hilarious flavour. And as for benefiting the public at large, they weren't defrauding the public at large, they were defrauding one insurance company. I doubt their incarceration has had a hugely beneficial effect on anyone's insurance premiums.

Defending the Guardian's publishing of Wikileaks cables against a clear case of false equivalence from Trinity Mirror's David Higgerson, Roy Greenslade said the News of the World were unable to "show that it had prima facie evidence of a public interest because its reporters were clearly engaged in "fishing expeditions"." Sky News have yet to explain what prima facie evidence it had prior to hacking John and Anne Darwin's emails and the suggestion from the panel and presenters of Sky's Press Preview that some aim to put a chill on the freedom of the press by investigating this issue further should be treated with suspicion.

On his Telegraph blog, today, Dan Hodges has concocted a very readable piece of contrary linkbait, announcing proudly that he wants not to see less state snooping, but MORE!

I'm certain there will be a slew of tweeters queuing up to call Hodges an idiot for this column. Not a Samantha Brick size mob, but I'm sure there'll be a few. That's not why I'm here today.

My purpose here is not to argue for or against increasing government surveillance of our digital lives, but to suggest Dan Hodges is starting to show signs of being a bit of a ropey journalist. Quite apart from apparently succumbing to the Telegraph's PLEASE BE AS CONTROVERSIAL AS POSSIBLE business model, a few paragraphs into the piece, his attention turns to issues of trust in authority.

I have an equally benign, if unfashionable, view of our politicians and our security services. I’m not the greatest fan of either Theresa May or David Cameron, but if they say they need to have access to my emails in order to ensure the security of the nation, I’m inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I'm well prepared to be called out as a hopeless romantic, an old fashioned soul, out of place in the modern world of political commentary, but I find this paragraph extremely troublesome.

There are certain qualities that make a good journalist. Possession of an analytical mind, a grasp of language and the ability to distil complex ideas are desirable, but none are as essential to the craft as an unrelenting distrust of authority.

Whatever your political colour, or even your own opinion on a subject, a journalist worthy of the title should never give anyone the benefit of the doubt. Most certainly not the Prime Minister or Home Secretary. Even if they're on your side.

What's the purpose in a fourth estate if it routinely gives its unquestioning trust to the other three? Even if you ignore the centuries of evidence that politicians are wrong as often as right, printing an assumption that something is true just because the Prime Minister said so isn't journalism.

If a surgeon didn't check he was removing the correct kidney, because he trusted that God had a plan for the patient, we'd call him negligent.

None of this is to say that papers should only carry the exact opposite opinion of the government of the day. That would be ludicrous. Jouranalists are free to hold any opinions they wish, so long as they come to them on thair own terms. Otherwise it's advertising. It's PR. You might even call it propaganda.

Hodges has never been afraid of upsetting important people, and it's possible the above paragraph is an offhand comment, thrown in to thicken an otherwise watery argument. But for one who plies a trade traditionally intended to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, the words "benefit of the doubt" should be anathema, and do nothing for his credibility.