The degenerate libertine! A fine sally at anti-Press zealot Mosley
DEGENERATE libertine! It takes a great newspaperman’s son such as Jacob Rees-Mogg (Con, NE Somerset) to flourish such language in the Commons. He noted that anti-Press zealot Max Mosley was a ‘degenerate libertine who was embarrassed by three papers a few years ago’.
The dictionary defines a libertine as ‘a morally dissolute person’.
It is a word to give libel lawyers an attack of the vapours but, given that Mr ReesMogg said it in the Commons, it is beyond the reach of defamation laws.
He pointed out that this same libertine is the man who has funded a group (Impress) which has just been made the official Press regulator. You will be shocked to hear that many papers, including the Mail, have decided to keep their distance.
The House was discussing Press regulation. Oh gawd. Here we go again. Some politicians really do hate us inkies. We are a check on their pomp and power. We pass comment on their antics. They consider us bluebottles on their creamy plum pie.
A tiny number of journalistic bad un’s disgraced Fleet Street by phone-hacking several years ago. Some politicians are still trying to use that to hammer us. Are you surprised?
The free Press exposed their expenses scandals. We exposed Keith Vaz (Lab, Leicester E) and his frolics with rough trade. Well, I suppose in the literal sense Mr Vaz actually exposed himself, even though he was pretending to be a washingmachine salesman called Jim. No doubt his smalls were spotless.
Did you see that the Commons on Monday night voted to appoint the same Vaz to the select committee on justice? Bizarre. Grotesque. Decadent. Not that I might be allowed to say so in future. Not in print, anyway. If I did so on the internet I would be fine because MPs are not proposing to regulate the internet. Just papers.
Culture Secretary Karen Bradley came to the Commons to say that the Government was opening a consultation on Press regulation.
This move was forced on Mrs Bradley to stop campaigners adding an anti-Press element to a bill dealing with national security. Beside her on the Government bench sat Matt Hancock, a culture minister who had cleverly come up with this route of saving that important bill from sabotage.
Tom Watson, for Labour, went all husky. ‘What a sad day this is,’ he gasped.
He wanted immediate imposition of a clause that would hit any paper with ruinous legal bills unless it jumped into bed with Mr Mosley. In the metaphorical sense, I should add.
What is it with Labour? On Monday many of its pro-EU MPs moaned about the Nissan cars investment that has guaranteed about 50,000 jobs.
And here was the party’s deputy leader attacking an industry which employs yet more thousands. How many jobs would they sacrifice to their dogmas?
John Whittingdale, Tory former culture secretary, said ‘the real media giants of today, Facebook and Google, are outside the scope of regulation altogether’.
For the SNP, former BBC journalist John Nicholson said that it was important to balance respect for privacy with Press freedom. Sir Peter Bottomley (Con, Worthing W and a keen litigant) went further. ‘Having an effective, robust Press is even more important than having an effective, robust Press regulator,’ he said.
ALAS, other Tory backbenchers were less wedded to freedom of speech. Bill Wiggin (Herefordshire N) – hailed by the Speaker, I suppose satirically, as ‘William’ – and Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) were acid in tone if not in black-and-white words.
On the Labour side we had the usual antifree speech noises from the likes of Ben Bradshaw, Chris Bryant and Paul Farrelly, who was once himself a journalist – a veritable laureate of the spike, I am told.
It was a few minutes later that Mr ReesMogg, whose father William once edited the Times, rode over the horizon with his ‘degenerate libertine’ sally, adding that the ‘freedom of the Press was more important than the Press being responsible’. Amen.