The Sky's The Limit

As a matter of the utmost urgency, we need to ban anyone from owning stakes both in newspapers and in broadcasting, or in more than one national daily newspaper, or in more than one national weekly newspaper, or in more than one television station, including more than one ITV regional franchise-holder.

Vince Cable, this is your Department. Over to you. Make it clear that if you don't get it, then you'll resign. Electoral reform is about to call into being a party for those whose priorities include the Welfare State, workers' rights, trade unionism, the co-operative movement, consumer protection, strong communities, conservation rather than environmentalism, fair taxation, full employment, public ownership, proper local government, a powerful Parliament, the monarchy, the organic Constitution, national sovereignty, civil liberties, the Union, the Commonwealth, the countryside, grammar schools, traditional moral and social values, controlled importation and immigration, a realistic foreign policy, and a base of real property for every household to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State.

But without the betrayal both of Gaitskellism and of Christian Socialism over nuclear weapons. Without the betrayal of Gaitskellism over Europe. Without the decadent social libertinism of Roy Jenkins, logically inseparable from the decadent economic libertinism given a face by Margaret Thatcher. Without the comprehensive schools mania of Shirley Williams. Without her regret at not having resigned in protest against past Labour measures to restrict immigration. Without, related to all of those but especially to the last, the fanatical hatred of trade unions. And therefore without any ties to the present Political Class of 1970s sectarian Leftists and 1980s sectarian Rightists, the first long ago bought up, and the second always owned outright, by Rupert Murdoch.