Or was it? After yesterday's initial scandal-mongering, some semblance of rationality seems to have return to most of the broadsheets. Least surprisingly, Polly Toynbee rails valiantly against the right-wing press (The Tory tactic is simple - get low down and dirty), accusing them of whipping up a scandal in order to serve the Tories' electoral interests:

"The Tory tactic is simple: demolish what they see as Labour's great asset - Gordon Brown's record and character. Fairly or not, Tony Blair's character has been shot to pieces on the streets of Iraq, in the White House rose garden, in holiday villas, his wife's lecture tours and in cash for honours, even if charges are never brought. Brown offers a marked contrast in style and content."

In the Independent, Steve Richards (Gordon Brown's main worry should be that this non-story has run with such ferocity), not for the first time, offers a cool-headed and unsensationalist analysis:

"The current row is over nothing in the sense that nothing of significance has surfaced in recent days. In the 1997 Budget, Brown scrapped the tax credits on payments of dividends to pension funds. This was known at the time and caused a fuss in the immediate aftermath."

Of course civil servants warned of the consequences of a cut in pensions tax relief - that is what they do. Treasury officials are there to advise of the effects of a change in policy, but it is up to the minister to make the final decision. The fact that he took the decision despite some potentially negative consequences is barely worthy of column inches.

Even in the Times, who originally "broke" the story, there is a sensible reaction from David Aaronovitch (I'm afraid Brown's not as black as he's painted), who considers Brown's biggest mistake to be the lack of discosure, rather than the actual policy. Indeed, he argues, the revenue earned by abolishing the tax relief may actually have done some good. Addressing an elderly reader, he claims:

"this five billion a year, I don’t think he spent it all on wars and speed cameras. A lot of it will have helped, in the early days, to reduce government borrowing. Some may have contributed, say, to the radically reduced orthopaedic waiting times now enjoyed (if that’s the word) by your generation. Maybe someone you know got a hip? Is it also conceivable that the money helped to fund the reduction in corporation tax, thus assisting in the creation of jobs."

However, judging by the comments to this piece, few Times readers would agree with his analysis.

I mentioned at the beginning that "most" broadsheets have offered some semblance of rationality. With tiresome predictability, the Telegraph continues to rouse rabbles in its own inimitable way (The plot thickens over pensions fiasco). Without a hint of hyperbole, it claims:

"This Government has been responsible for a number of bad policy judgments, but Gordon Brown's decision to change the rules for tax relief on pension funds is in another league from most of its administrative or political mistakes. It is no exaggeration to say that it has ruined the lives of many people who had every reason to believe that the pensions to which they had been contributing throughout their productive years would provide them with security in their retirement. Removing £5 billion a year from the value of funded pensions must have seemed at the time to be the perfect stealth tax: no one would notice (until much later) that their private or occupational scheme would no longer provide them with the income they needed to survive in the last years of their lives."

My biggest quibble with this is the suggestion that removing tax relief on pensions is a policy mistake that surpasses any other. That it will have more disastrous consequences than, oh, say, the war in Iraq, growing income inequality, the complexities of the tax credit scheme, the loss of civil liberties etc. is simply preposterous. The Labour government has made far worse policy mistakes during the last 10 years - could we not focus on those instead please?

Also in today's news:

• The Independent publishes its "poll of polls" that shows the Tories opening up an 8 point gap ahead of Labour. The Lib Dems are unchanged on 18%. Cameron only needs another small advance to deny Labour the option of forming a pact with the Lib Dems to retain power (Independent).
  
• The Guardian reveals that the RAF has considered the use of "suicide flights" to combat terrorism (Guardian).