I AM determined not to gloat over Maria Miller.

Certainly I am not a fan of the now former Culture Secretary.

Hardly the most charismatic person to head Britain’s cultural nation, she was also responsible for rejecting the press’s work to create a non-political regulator.

And yet, I am a little uneasy at the manner in which a senior politician has been hounded from office, even though it appears public opinion is against her.

I say members of the public, but if you followed the BBC you would believe it was ‘The Papers’ who had managed to force the MP from Basingstoke from her Cabinet role.

News bulletins on the Beeb carried images of headlines calling for Mrs Miller to stand down or be sacked by the Prime Minister after she was ordered to pay back a little under £6,000 she had wrongly claimed in mortgage interest. She was also called on to offer an apology for not cooperating with the Commons inquiry into her affair in the open spirit that was expected.

The BBC stopped short of saying there was little or no support for the headlines among the public simply because there was, but their message was clear: that this was a vendetta against the minister because she had voted in favour of the Royal Charter to create a new press regulator so disliked by the papers themselves.

The BBC has form here. They often show the ‘media scrum’ attendant at some unfolding drama, while all the time pretending they are somehow aloof from the pack. (And last month’s Jeremy Paxman soft-touch interview on Newsnight with shamed Co-op Bank boss the Rev Paul Flowers was a thinly veiled “Let’s get the Daily Mail” affair.) However, there is no denying the papers have played a role in the bringing down of Mrs Miller, but only a role. The BBC and all other broadcasters have led bulletin after bulletin on her plight since she rose in Parliament for her 32-second lacklustre apology.

And yet, I remain uneasy. If the press is to maintain the moral high ground on the issue of press regulation and the policing of a responsible industry, we should be wary of being seen to help to bring down an elected politician who took a stand on an issue we dislike. True, public opinion appears to be with us this time, but it will worry, perhaps, that newspapers have seen an opportunity to seek revenge.

In the end Maria Miller did claim more than she should. She was not as helpful as she could have been in the investigation into her affairs. Her apology was poorly played.

And there is no doubt we should relish the fact we live in a democracy where the powerful are not allowed to be tainted by financial scandal and are subject to robust media scrutiny.

Yet we should be aware of the dangers of the charge to the top of the moral ground becoming, or being seen as, a witch-hunt.