The Setting Sun

The old gang is on trial, the campaign against Page Three is gearing up, and Kelvin MacKenzie wants damages from South Yorkshire Constabulary. All that, and Leveson has not even reported yet.

As much as anything else, the obviously impending closure will force the Mirror Group titles back to their roots as serious popular newspapers. After all, Maurice Glasman never did take up that column on the Sunday edition of The Sun. Let it go and take Toby Young with it.

There was a pre-Murdoch Sun, and even Auberon Waugh wrote for it. Before even that, it was the Daily Herald, which was at one time edited by George Lansbury, and for which both Chesterton and Belloc were known to write.

It awarded the Order of Industrial Heroism, the medal of which was designed by Eric Gill of the Distributist League and of the Westminster Cathedral Stations of the Cross, and featured Saint Christopher carrying the Christ Child.

That at a time when the awarding newspaper was the official organ of the TUC, recalling all those Biblical scenes and characters on many a trade union banner.

Maurice Glasman, indeed. Rod Liddle, as now. Neil Clark. Tim Collard. Martin Meenagh. Oh, yes, there would be no shortage of people to write for the revived Daily Herald. With no more competition from the gutter or the sewer.