There’s an ongoing scandal at the heart of our media; a crime not just against those living but against those yet to be born. Throughout the passage of the health and social care act, the BBC was the dog that barely raised an eyebrow. It’s been the most obedient of parrots as far as the deficit is concerned, and its only response to the ongoing catastrophe that is welfare ‘reform’ is silence.

I love the BBC – it is perhaps the closest thing I have to a religion – but it simply doesn’t do a very good job of holding the government to account. Pitting a Liberal Democrat minister against a Tory backbencher, or vice versa, might be good theatre: but it isn’t scrutiny.  And yet, more often than not, political discussion in the broadcast media boils down to one arm of the coalition against the other. The problem is more visible now, but it has roots that go well beyond 2010: there is a reason why there is no analogue to the expenses scandal or cash-for-honours. There is a reason why the Major government was beaten down by the print press and not the broadcast press. There is a reason why Jonathan Aitken was exposed by the Guardian and not the BBC. Regulated media is quiescent media.

Progressives who defend state-backed regulation are not – despite the rabid wailings of some of their rightwing opponents – engaged in an attempt to bring about some ‘Orwellian’ police state, but they are dabbling in doublethink. People who argued that Jeremy Hunt had too much influence over Ofcom to adjudicate the BskyB takeover are now claiming that Ofcom is sufficiently immune to government interference for it to regulate the press. People who excoriate – and with good reason – the BBC’s milquetoast response to the government are now suggesting that the same regime that governs the BBC won’t neuter the print press.

It’s easy to forget, but the Leveson inquiry was not a response to Page 3. The government didn’t spend millions of pounds on lawyers because the Daily Express demonises immigrants. because the Guardian endorsed the Liberal Democrats, or to seek recompense for all the times that Mail Online has referred to an underage girl as having ‘curves’. It was not called to order to put Kelvin MacKenzie on the scaffold or to bring Rupert Murdoch’s empire tumbling down. It was a response to criminal activity that is already being pursued and punished in the courts. It’s being used as an opportunity to bring Labour’s perceived enemies to heel, but it won’t work, and, in the end, progressives will be the biggest losers if Leveson is implemented.

There is a delusion at work in the Labour party: that to reform the press is to reform the country. But the biggest obstacle to a Labour victory in 2015 isn’t the rightwing media: it’s the rightwing country. Forcing Murdoch to sell off part of his imperium wouldn’t result in a new social democratic broadsheet: but a conservative tabloid owned by another multibillionaire with rightwing sympathies. News just in: if you can afford to buy a newspaper, you are almost certainly obscenely wealthy, and guess what? The obscenely wealthy tend not to favour the Labour party. We talk about the scandal of a handful of ultra-rich press barons owning our newspapers: it’s a bigger problem that a handful of ultra-rich oligarchs own Kensington.

What would Labour end up with if Leveson were fully implemented? Still the same old unsympathetic electorate to win over, against a centre-right coalition that still dominates the airwaves. Still struggling to articulate an alternative to capitalism in a post-crisis world. But it would damage a part of British public life that holds the powerful to account, that holds the government to account.

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Stephen Bush writes a weekly column for Progress, the Tuesday review, and tweets @stephenkb

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Photo: Jon S