David Cameron: the press may regret its defiance over regulation

In my interview with David Cameron in the current Christmas edition of The Spectator, there wasn’t enough space for everything – including his thoughts on press regulation. We did discuss it, in the back of his car, and he warned that the press is playing a dangerous game in its defiance — i.e., refusing to sign up to the Politicians’ Charter. This was an elegant and voluntary compromise, he said, and the alternative may be compulsory statutory regulation enforced by an illiberal Labour government.

After the publication of the Leveson Report in November last year, Cameron spoke very eloquently about the danger of statutory regulation – rejecting regulation which ‘has the potential to infringe free speech and a free press’. So he asked Oliver Letwin to come up with a compromise — which was complicated. The Royal Charter is a medieval device which deploys the power of the state without the supervision parliament.