Time Out, Indeed

The relaunch of that London listings magazine as a freesheet might send it back to its roots in radical campaigning. At any rate, someone needs to do something about the monopoly enjoyed by Boris Johnson, who has the Evening Standard in one of his pockets and Metro in the other.

Likewise, why are Labour-controlled councils and other public bodies still advertising positions in a Coalition newspaper which would otherwise go bust? Labour councillors or other party members who allowed advertising in The Guardian ought already to have been made liable to expulsion. Why has that not happened? When it it going to happen? (Never mind the rumour passed on to me today, that the Scott Trust was going to be given Sky News as a post-Leveson spoil of war.)

The usual answer is that there is no alternative. Oh, yes, there is. The Mail and Telegraph newspapers are more anti-Coalition than The Guardian, and could be opened up considerably to the agenda of Ed Miliband, Jon Cruddas and Maurice Glasman if there were hard cash in it for them; the Mail on Sunday, especially. But quite apart from that, the appointment of The People's Lloyd Embley as Editor-in-Chief of the Mirror Group provides an ideal opportunity to keep it in the family. Alternatively, such a weekly supplement would guarantee the future of Tribune or of the Morning Star.

It might also guarantee the finances of a formation which, while welcoming Labour's present return to its historical norm of a many-rooted social democratic patriotism including social and cultural conservatives, was for that very reason fully aware that someone needed to keep Labour on that track or else stand ready to replace it, although for the time being it confined itself to contesting local elections, list elections, elections to any new or reformed second chamber, and elections to the House of Commons where the Labour Party or the SDLP was in third place or below.

In that last case, at least, those candidates ought not to face Labour opponents, as the litmus test of the sincerity of Labour's return to its historical norm. In all cases, those candidates would deserve trade union funding. But there would be no harm in also having a little something on which to fall back. The revenue from all national advertisement of positions with Labour-controlled councils or other public bodies would do that. It would, in fact, be another such litmus test.