Sorry, Maria Miller. We still won’t sign

The very fact that a Cabinet member has stood up in the House of Commons to make a statement on the future of newspapers suggests there’s something going rather wrong in our democracy. For three centuries, newspapers have not been toys in the political train set. Britain has operated on an unspoken principle of liberty, so firmly embedded in the national DNA that the separation between government and the press did not need spelt out in a constitution.

Today, a medieval group known as the Privy Council (in fact, an octet of politicians) has decided to reject the newspaper industry’s plans for self-regulation in favour of politicians’ plans for press regulation. You can read Maria Miller’s statement here, and listen to it below, but the crux of it is that the newspapers’ bid to save their freedom is not ‘consistent with Government policy’. She says the politicians will now finish off their own charter:

‘All three political parties will work together in the forthcoming days and produce a final draft of the cross-party Charter to place in the Libraries of both Houses on Friday.’