Ivan Lewis’s Comedy Act

So the shadow Culture Secretary thinks journalists should be licensed (by whom?) and rotten hacks guilty of “serious misconduct” (how is that to be defined?) should be “struck-off”. Well, that’s a proposal guaranteed to go down well with the press corps!

Ignore the fact that it’s unworkable in the internet age and that it’s perhaps only meant as a signal to the party faithful that Mr Lewis doesn’t like that nasty brute Murdoch any more than the rest of them. Nevertheless signal matter, not least since they often reveal what a politiican or a party really believes. This is one such instance: the answer to any problem, however trivial it may be, is in more centralisation, more regulation, more interference.

It misses the wider point too: too many trades are licensed as it is. There comes a point at which occupational licensing ceases to offer guarantees to consumers and becomes instead a cute form of restraining trade, protecting those already inside at the expense of those who would like to make a living and, not at all coincidentally, a means of saying to hell with the consumer’s interests.