Daveybloke's Moral Thingy

Daveybloke, the Cuddly Conservative, has been dispensing moral advice to Rupert Murdoch, proclaiming that it might have been politically expedient to throw Rebekah Brooks to the wolves along with Andy Coulson and the staff of the News of the World. "It's been reported that she had offered her resignation in this situation, and I would have taken it," Daveybloke burbled at a press conference. The source of the report was the present editor of the News of the World, whose employers at News International immediately denied what he had said. Both the report and the denials emerged yesterday, before Daveybloke gave his press conference; presumably Daveybloke's confusion over the matter is a sign of continuing moral shock at his Cuddly Coulson's ungentlemanly conduct.

Nevertheless, Daveybloke has mustered sufficient coherence to announce the long-overdue replacement of the Press Complaints Commission with an actual regulatory body, "so the public will know that newspapers will never again be solely responsible for policing themselves." After all, newspapers are not the Metropolitan Firearms and Headbangers' Club, whatever transactions the free market may have allowed to take place between them; and this irritating crisis might never have happened were it not for the Guardian trying to police Daveybloke's chums. Since newspapers - even newspapers as ugly, unscrupulous and trivial as the average British tabloid - are rapidly falling out of date, little harm should be done; and thanks to the good offices of Jeremy C Hunt, Murdoch's tar-and-feather empire will soon be granted a still larger influence over the future of Britain's infotainment landscape.