Leading article: Twitterati

Ed Miliband's 6,664 Twitter followers must have thought that things were looking up. After all, it's not every day that a cabinet minister tries to sell you herbal Viagra.

But that was what the Energy Secretary seemed to be up to yesterday via the micro-blogging site. Except, of course, he wasn't. Mr Miliband had merely been the victim of a "phishing" scam. And jolly disappointing this no doubt was to Mr Miliband's followers. For having absorbed months of tweets on subjects such as boiler scrappage, feed-in-tariffs and the carbon framework for aviation, they must have been thrilled that Mr Miliband was revealing something personal. Perhaps he shouldn't have been so hasty about broadcasting the truth.

Indeed, how long, we wonder, before a politician disowns a tweet about some abstruse policy detail and puts the blame on a vindictive Twitterjacker who wants to make them sound boring?