Wordblog

Every day, while some MPs caught caught trousering dubious expenses compete to sound as if they have just completed time in a soviet re-eduction camp, others mouth ritual condemnation of sensational media.

Yet the most cogent criticism of the of the media’s role in the current crisis comes not from and MP but a journalist. Martin Kettle writing in the Guardian yesterday blames the failure to pay MPs a proper wage. He writes, in a piece headed “The true patrons of this greed are an over-mighty press”:

Why did Thatcher and the rest hold off? Not because MPs didn’t need the money or wouldn’t vote for it. They held off because they were afraid of the newspapers, particularly the Sun. They were not prepared to risk the wrath of Rupert. It was the press who stood between MPs and a sensible income. So the true patron of the expenses system against which the press rages today is the press itself.

He acknowledges the argument for fewer MPs and writes:

The cases that MPs take up today used to be dealt with by local councillors. If we want to spend less on MPs we should restore effective local government. Unless we do that, the current vogue for having fewer MPs is mere angry populism.

Finally, his argument is that of a London journalist seeing the media in purely metropolitan terms. The centralisation that has afflicted British Government is evident also in the media.

Kettle concludes his argument thus:

In the end, one has to confront the following serious question. What aspect of the restoration of trust in politics would be in the media’s interest? The answer is no part of it at all. A media that have become progressively less engaged with serious political argument and progressively more focused on personal frailty, foible and failure is one of the shapers of the nation’s political problem, not the deliverer from it.

He asks a question and answers it from a metrocentric position. From outside London the answer should be that all aspects of a restoration of trust in politics is in the interests of the media.

Strong newspapers, broadcasting and web journalism require strong local government. That means returning powers to town and county halls and finding a way to create a  regional layer.

For Westminster MPs this has seemed to me to be a no-brainer. At the moment they are expected to have responsibility for every case of poor treatment of an ingrowing toenail, pothole in the road and the failure of Susie to get good GCSEs.

The restoration of local power would bring democracy back closer to the voters and give the local press something to get its teeth into. At the same time Westminster could concentrate on doing the truely national and internations things better. So reform which restored trust in politics would give a debilitated local media something to get its teeth into.