Exit strategy?

Will Richard Ingrams' days be numbered as an Independent columnist if Roger Alton becomes the paper's editor? Although Ingrams, the former editor of Private Eye, had a back-page berth at Alton's Observer for many years until he moved his weekly musings to the Independent in 2005, he doesn't seem to cherish the work of his old boss much. Writing in his column last month, he reflected on the allegations about the Observer's coverage of the Iraq war contained in Nick Davies' controversial new book Flat Earth News. "[Davies] describes for the first time how the Observer was used by Alastair Campbell to promote the government's flimsy case for war, but also to print accounts of Saddam's non-existent weapons of mass destruction," Ingrams noted. "Not only that, but when the New York correspondent filed a story detailing CIA misgivings about the WMD claims, the paper saw fit not to print the story, thereby ignoring an important scoop. Reading this melancholy tale made me feel quite ashamed of my long association with the Observer." Monkey suggests that the venerable Ingrams should start planning his next move now.