Could this be rlCameron's most embarassing U-turnrl so far?

After publicly proclaiming he was walking away from cross-party talks on implementing Leveson's recommendations and was willing to go to a vote in Parliament today, it looks like a deal has been reached that's more like the Clegg/Miliband suggestion.

At least he waited until after his party's Spring conference.

Is it? Unless it is underpinned by law isn't it Clegg and Miliband who have climbed down?

The reportiong the BBC you link to says this:

The BBC's Nick Robinson said Labour and the Liberal Democrats appeared to have accepted a watered-down version of their demands for full legal underpinning of a royal charter establishing a new watchdog.

Ms Miller said: "We're very close to a deal. What has been accepted by all the main parties is that the prime minister's royal charter should go ahead, and more importantly we've stopped Labour's extreme version of the press law."

So its a watered down version according to Nick Robinson and Labour has been "stopped" according to Miller. Now I know Nick Robinson is a Tory and Miller obviously wants to paint the picture she does but just how far has Cameron moved toward the Labour/ Lib Dem position?

And a few Tory MPs to be fair.

Camoron had no chance of winning a vote on the proposal he walked away from the table with. He must have known that at the time. What's more interesting is why Labour and the Lib Dems agreed to negotiate further when they already had a winning hand.

Quite. It seems Labour are saying the fact there will be a law that says royal charters in general can't be tampered with means it does have a legal underpinning whereas Miller doesn't mention the effect this legislation will have, only that they have stopped Labour's " Labour's extreme version of the press law".

Which is it?

The fact the legislation applies generally to all royal charters is supposedly a way of avoiding saying just underpinning this one by law means only the press has a royal charter regulating them that us underpinned by law.

I think there are some other compromises in there from both sides but given the Labour and Lib Dem position was legal underpinning was required I don''t see how they can accept anything that doesn't give that regardless of what other concessions are given towards their position (no veto by the press on commission members etc).



I think he was more worried about the 20 or so Tory MP's who would line up against him as well. It's not as party political as Miller wants to make out.

I saw this comment attributed to a labour source on the Guardian referring to the amendment to prevent royal charters being amended:

Lab source re Lords amendment:"This is not a little bit of statute, this is not a 'dab' of statute. This is statute pure and simple."

And add to that the likes of Murdoch, the Barclay brothers and Viscount Rothermere, who won't be happy with any form of regulation with serious underpinning at all.

Because they didn't get their amendment in even with them being naughty and delaying the close of Parliament on Friday for over an hour

True.

So a "free" press really means one free from having any responsibility to behave in a reasonable manner then?

I did get annoyed this morning when watching the news.
There was an editor of the Sun squealing about free press and how control of it is bad. Clearly the man doesn't realize the hypocrisy of it being him (NI employee) kicking off about it.
As for them using a picture of Winston Churchill this morning well nothing surprises me about that rag anymore.

Yes that is exactly what the 'free press' think.

Still, it made a nice cover for the news that the [iSun[/i has admitted accessing an MP's mobile phone – in 2010.

So much of it is an utter farce. I suspect that, for most people, the idea of a free press is one that will act in the best interests of the majority. The majority of our press acts in the interests of its owners. We can see that in many, many ways.

But media is a business – why do we expect it to be any different to any other businesses, which also act in the interests of their owners and shareholders, such as Findus, with horsemeat in its beef products or the banks that mess up?

And it's quite clear looking at those examples that proper regulation is required, properly enforced. It's farcical to try to pretend that that should not be the case for the media.

To the argument that we already have laws that can deal with any problems – no, we don't. We do not have a privacy law.

And it's worth noting that regulation, underpinned by statute, works perfectly well in other countries such as Denmark.

Finally, ladies and gents, I give you what 'freedom of the press' means to rlthe [iMail[/irl: publishing pap shots of an eight-year-old child leaving a gym class and calling her "a leggy beauty".