A Threat To Press Freedom?

Is the Leveson Inquiry a threat to press freedom? I for one would dearly love to be able to argue that our robust media culture was to be defended because it guaranteed a plurality of voices, reflecting the country. But is that still true?

The turn to the Labour Party of Ed Miliband is the turn by those opposed to the crippling of provincial economies through the slashing of the spending power of public employees, to the breaking up of the National Health Service with a view to its piecemeal privatisation, to the deregulation of Sunday trading, to the devastation of rural communities through the sale of our postal service and of our roads, to the abolition of Gift Aid, and to the imposition of VAT on church repairs. Among other attacks on the things most valued by conservative Britain, which rightly looks to the State to safeguard those values. Miliband has never threatened to whip any vote on the redefinition of legal marriage. But he and Jon Cruddas have as good as announced a commitment to a referendum on EU membership, specifically ruled out by William Hague.

It is no wonder that the local elections proved a triumph for a de facto alternative Coalition embracing all parts of the United Kingdom, all of their respective internal regions, all ethnic groups and social classes, all living generations of voting age, town and country, conventionally left-wing and conventionally right-wing, Labour and Independent. Economically social democratic. Sanely conservative socially and culturally. Patriotic against all comers: the EU or the US, Israel or the Gulf monarchs, China or the Russian oligarchs, money markets or media moguls, separatists or communalists. Which newspaper is participating in that? Which newspaper is leading it?

The new seven-day Mirror is to be edited by Lloyd Embley, under whom The People alone endorsed Ed Miliband for Labour Leader. That is a start. But Mail and Telegraph readers want to vote for a party which fights for Post Offices while fighting against flogging off the roads to oil-rich foreign states or the hospitals and the surgeries to American healthcare corporations. A party which would never consider turning Sunday into just another shopping day, or taxing charities and churches out of existence. A party which, since civil partnerships already exist, does not compel its MPs to support redefining marriage. A party which promises a referendum on continued membership of the EU.

In 2015, they will have the option of voting for such a party. Will their newspapers declare for it? Or will they expose themselves as off the books campaigning arms of the party that wants to close the Post Offices, flog off the roads and the NHS, force people to work seven-day weeks, and deny an EU referendum, having also wanted to tax the churches and charities into oblivion while forcing its MPs to redefine marriage? If the latter, then Britain will stand exposed as having no press freedom to threaten. A press like that is not a free press.