I witnessed my first-ever PMQs last week. It was, as my friend and Spectator colleague Isabel Hardman told me, not a raucous a PMQs as can usually be. Yet for me, it seemed a pretty lively parliamentary debate and — at the risk of sounding hopelessly naive — a bit of a treat to actually see important things being debated for all to see.
I wonder if UK politicians know that the Royal Charter they have drawn up may one day come back and bite their butts? For what they’re proposing finally influences an entire nation’s conversation.
If they have their way, the UK is headed for press regulation, the first time its media will be under state licensing in 300 years. It’s a sad hour not only for British journalism, I think, but for journalists everywhere.
Of course, the British media will still be far, far less shackled than the press in almost any other country in the world. But once politicians have a say in what can and cannot be said or printed, what happens after, and after, and after? Do the politicians even know themselves?
For it happens insidiously, little by little. I come from Southeast Asia where, for all intents and purposes, most people lead peaceful, increasingly prosperous lives. Yet almost all journalists in the region know what happens when you step too far from a government’s accepted line — indeed, we’ve sometimes seen the consequences happen to our colleagues or to entire publications. So most of us do that deadly thing — we self-censor.
Self-censorship warps everything. You might think it only affects people directly involved with the press, but in truth it seeps into all parts of national life. It weakens discourse, both public and private. It distorts every form of expression, high and low. Softly, it kills the arts. Slowly, it poisons all writing. It saps the life out of books and songs, plays and films, TV shows and live debates. It takes away my voice, your voice, everyone’s.
For ultimately, there is no such thing as ‘a little freedom’, just as one can’t be a ‘little pregnant’ — or indeed, ‘have a bit of PMQs’.
It is all or nothing.
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