It is straightforward enough. Minors should not be photographed without their parents' consent. There, on the front pages, were the pictures. Open and shut. Christening, like marriage, is one of the few things left that draws marginal believers into church.
Babies look bonny in white.
Here was an event from which a sharp press secretary was bound to extract some costless feel-good. What got printed were indeed, as Chris Smith disinterestedly observed, lovely pictures. The Blairs' wish for a private church service is their right, but they know that, for the time being, they and their children live negotiated lives. By the crude standards of these matters, the press were calm over the drunken elder son episode. Some kind of pay-off was expected.