Power and the press

That the House of Lords has survived as an unelected chamber is largely down to the Salisbury Convention, which holds that peers do not vote down government bills on matters which appeared in the governing party’s election manifesto. It is a doctrine under attack as never before, partly as a result of the Lords’ votes against the government’s Brexit plans but also as a result of the Upper House’s battle of attrition against the government on press standards.

It is bizarre to see an issue of such little importance to the public taking up so much parliamentary time. For generations, freedom of the press was regarded as an essential British liberty — the sort that people entered parliament to defend. Now we see Ed Miliband making passionate speeches against it, as if seeking revenge for the not-always-reverential way in which he was treated in the run-up to the 2015 general election.