Pressing On

Armistice Day is the perfect day to march for a ceasefire, and the one on Saturday has never been intended to start until two hours after the two minutes' silence, because that is the kind of time that these things always start. It has never been planned to go up Whitehall. There is no one up there on a Saturday, anyway. But even if there had been, then they would have been quite undisturbed. And it is not on Remembrance Sunday, which is, like, you know, the day after. For good or ill, most people now have no idea that Remembrance Day is not Remembrance Sunday. There has never been any such thing as "Remembrance Weekend". When 11th November fell in the middle of the week, then would this newly invented purdah last several days?

Yet the hysteria continues because people might wish to express the opinion of 76 per cent of the population. When can we have our own print media, and our own Freeview television stations? So much then for shouty newspapers with fewer a million readers, and for stupid politicians who were still frightened of them. So much for Douglas Murray, who materialised out of thin air is in his early twenties as the world's greatest expert on everything, based on nothing more than a posh accent, a Young Fogey wardrobe, a condescending manner, and a 2:2 in English. 20 and more years later, he has not changed a bit.

And so much for Suella Braverman, who wants to steal the tents from the homeless in order to stick asylum seekers in them. If the popular press were in line with overwhelming majority opinion on everything from the NHS, to the public ownership of the railways and of the utilities, to opposition to successive wars, then Braverman would be the bad joke figure that she ought to be. She would probably have been deselected earlier this year.

Why is it not, though? Why does the Morning Star not outsell the Daily Star, or the Daily Mirror (occasionally sound, but mostly the reliable voice of the very right-wing Labour Right), never mind The Sun, which advances an economic and foreign policy line wildly outside the mainstream? Why did The Word fail, to my great regret, since it was very, very much where I was politically? Why did The Eclipse? I wish Byline Times every success in its move into print, but there needs to be something in addition to a monthly paper that cost £4:50.

I have been thinking about this since the Blue Labour days, so for 10 years or thereabouts, and I think that I have worked out why papers that were in line with popular opinion were not popular. I think that I know how to solve the problem.

Therefore, I am involved in the early stages of creating a national weekly magazine of news and comment. It will be in good, old-fashioned print, so that no boy in Silicon Valley will be able to press a button and close it down, and it will have only the same online presence as Private Eye, which seems to do all right commercially. Newsprint is far cheaper than it used to be, so 15,000 copies could be produced for well under £2000, and probably for less than £1500. Obviously, we would wish to aim a lot higher than that. But that does give a guide to the figures. The retail price is expected to be one pound.

People who are trying to shut me down, are trying to shut this down. Their latest wheeze has already set it back half a year. Among other things, they are obstructing a mass circulation weekly page on the persecution of Christians, as well as a huge audience for a Catholic commentary on each Sunday's Gospel. But I am pressing on.