How much further are we going to be pushed around by a hardline, self-serving, unregenerate cabal of newspaper owners masquerading under the figleaf of press freedom when their real motive is the preservation at any cost of their own power and non-accountability? Leveson conducted a year’s intense inquiry into press regulation after the huge phone-hacking scandal and produced a monumental analysis of nearly 1,000 pages arguing for an intricately balanced system of oversight which studiously avoided any hint of political control and invited voluntary press participation in independent self-regulation.
The newspaper publishers turned it down flat. One wonders how they would have reacted if Burglars Incorporated had rejected the laws controlling burglary and insisted on writing their own rules for burglary supervision. Then when the political parties proposed a Royal Charter to remove the whole issue even further away from any whiff of political involvement, they rejected that. Then uninvited they suddenly produced their alternative Royal Charter and insisted it should be given priority over the Privy Council one, once again demanding to write their own laws irrespective of an elected Parliament or an elected Government. Continue reading
Ed Miliband promised in November that, if the Government hadn’t given their blessing to the broad range of Leveson’s proposals and in particular the need for statutoryunderpinning, he would force a vote in the Commons by 31 January which with the support of the LibDems he might be expected to win. 
There are 3 possible positions on the central issue of division on the Leveson report. One is the press industry’s view, and presumably Cameron’s, namely a stronger version of the Hunt-Black proposals for independent self-regulation which could incorporate many of the Leveson principles, but crucially would be voluntary and depend on the industry coming together to agree its terms and how to enforce them. 
Andy Coulson’s arrest for alleged perjury in the Tommy Sheridan trial isn’t just an embarrassment for Cameron. It raises a much wider and more difficult issue: how can a deeply insidious, unhealthy and toxic relationship between politicians and media proprietors – specifically the Tories (Thatcher), New Labour (Blair), the Tories again (Cameron) and Murdoch – be prevented from developing to the point where it contaminates politics and secretly corrupts the whole democratic process? 