Fit and Proper

Ah, Sir Peter Tapsell, newly deceased. 

A Keynesian and pro-Commonwealth opponent of the Eurofederalist project from the very start, he consistently opposed the neoconservative wars all the way back to Kosovo, and he called for a return to the division between retail banking and investment banking.

In their seasons he identified the money markets, the media moguls and the intelligence agencies as the heirs of the nabobs and of the Whig magnates whom past generations of Tories had made it their defining cause to cut down to size and to subject to the sovereignty of Parliament.

In November 2012, he rose in the House of Commons to ask the then Prime Minister, "Should not ownership of newspapers be restricted to British nationals who are judged fit and proper, as with television?"

A worthy tradition, indeed.