Quis Custodiet?

Much um-ing and ah-ing that The Guardian has finally gone too far this time.

But why has it taken this? 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 is it going to happen?

The usual answer is that there is no alternative. Oh, yes, there is. 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 as well as liberals, the religious as well as the secular, the rural as well as the urban and suburban, and so on, 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.