If you’re angry at cuts to legal aid (and you should be), then don’t just direct your ire at David Cameron.

For those unlucky enough to sit through this morning’s press conference announcing changes to the justice system, let me give it to you in a nutshell.

The prime minister strode out, flanked by two union jack flags, before announcing he’ll be taking lunch with the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh, so he’d better speed through.

There followed a remarkable spiel of rhetoric and tabloid-pandering that may as well have been written at Wapping HQ.

Those that threaten people with knives will be jailed (whatever happened to that promise to jail everyone carrying a knife I wonder?).

Furthermore, you can now defend your home using reasonable force – a dramatic sea change in policy from previously, when, er, you could defend your home using reasonable force.

It begs the question, can you defend your home (using reasonable force) by threatening the burglar with a knife? Answers on a postcard please.

As we all knew in advance, sentences will not now be halved for an early guilty plea, leaving Ken Clarke’s justice department to find £130m in savings from elsewhere.

Yet on the subject of legal aid, Cameron devoted barely 10 seconds, merely trotting out the line that the UK spends more on legal aid than anywhere else in the world.

The prime minister appeared to think this a bad thing, seemingly seeking to hack away at the fundamental principle in our system that justice must be accessible to all. It’s a bit like when people wheel out the line: ‘Why should I be tolerant of them when they wouldn’t tolerate us in their country?’ It’s because this is the UK, and I’m proud of the human rights and freedoms that set us apart from so much of the world.

Yet whatever you think of the government, let’s save our real anger for my journalistic brothers posing to questions to Cameron.

They asked about Ken Clarke. Then they asked again, but slightly rephrased. They asked about government U-turns, splits and indecision. They asked about Libya, Scottish independence and the Greek tragedy at the EU. They even asked about the bow tie-wearing consultant who shouted at the PM last week.

Yet not a single reporter thought to question the government’s policy on legal aid – instead pursuing their own lazy, personality-driven agenda to the detriment of a fundamental pillar of our society.

Rome burnt, yet the nation’s journalists simply sat there and fanned the flames.