Why plans to hobble UK newspapers are a tyrant’s charter

Journalism can be a dangerous job. In many places on our planet, rich and powerful people dislike anyone investigating their nefarious affairs and are swift to threaten, imprison, torture and even kill those who do so.

The brave men and women who resist such pressure and report truth in the face of tyranny are not just helping to expose corruption and injustice. They are fighting for something we in Britain take for granted: the right to free expression that is a foundation stone of our democracy.

Small wonder, then, that many journalists in foreign countries look with envy on a place where politicians cannot dictate the public agenda, where censors do not hold sway and where reporters are free to investigate wrongdoing without fear.

So they would be shocked to discover that Britain, the mother of parliamentary democracy, faces the threat of politicians muzzling the press.

We stand on the brink of permitting a self-protecting political class to impose a state- sanctioned regulator – and incredibly, devolving official approval to a body funded by the embittered son of a wartime fascist who ended up on the front pages in a sex scandal.

As human rights groups such as Index on Censorship point out, if such measures were introduced in other countries, British politicians would be the first to scream about dreadful state censorship.