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.
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