Press-ganged? Get over yourself!

Sorry to get boring on the subject but could there be a more unlikely popularity contest than the nation's press and politicians trying to outdo each other to gain the public's trust over standards?

Really?

It has evidently escaped the collective memories of the main players that Leveson finally came about because both groups who propped up their respective bars in the Last Chance Saloon failed to address the parlous state that unregulated press standards have reached in this country.

Today we're greeted by the nauseous spectacle of proprietors screaming about press freedoms while party leaders get hot & cold flushes as they slap each other on the back for tinkering with unrelated statutes that may (or may not) curb the commercially-driven excesses of Grub Street.

Is it too much for us poor mortals to expect a solution that will ensure that we remain properly informed by a press unfettered by state controls whilst also being able to enjoy our rights as private citizens? What's so wrong with the Danish version?

All the doom and gloom about the end of investigative reporting is as over-played as threats of mass banker-migration if bonuses are capped. Journalism will remain a gloriously dishonourable profession where it is only getting the story that counts. Restrictions on what can be reported will not inhibit any hack from provoking a reaction by whispering rumours like some gabardine-clad Iago. Door-stepping of celebs caught in flagrante will continue and someone's hamster will get eaten if circulation demands it.

The claims that this is about payback politics are largely unsustainable. Conservatives MPs who were more affected by revelations over duck house and garden maintenance revelations are among the biggest critics of so-called statutory underpinning. Nor is there a discernible Labour and Lib Dems agenda of wanting to curb a tory press. No politician in office today wants to discover when their stint in opposition comes around that that they helped diminish the ability of newspapers to uncover and publish government misdeeds.

The truth is that as messy and unplanned as yesterday's outcome turned out, the Murdochs, Dacres and others cannot complain that they didn't see it coming. And as much as they may protest that they were omitted from the meetings which constructed the deal, it is their own abysmal record of past inaction that makes them the undeniable architects.

Update: Rupert Murdoch doesn't think the Queen will sign off on the Royal Charter thing. Meanwhile editors talk of going their own way.