A bad move for the Sun

I don’t trust this Government, the police or the State bureaucracy to discriminate between keeping an eye out for our well-being and spying on us.
Information is power. And the authorities — national and local — have far too much of the stuff already.

The best so far that the Sun can muster in support of David Davis,from Trevor Kavanagh's column this morning and perhaps that lack of support could be significant.

The paper after all have supported the 42 day bill and is firmly behind the idea of ID cards.
Most Sun readers will instinctively support 42 days’ detention without trial for terror suspects if it helps prevent an atrocity on the streets of Britain.
They would accept ID cards as a sensible way of co-ordinating swathes of information already in the public domain if it made life easier as well as more secure.

However the paper up to now has been quiet on the issue.It is now becoming increasingly unlikely that Kelvin MacKenzie will stand in the by election.

Writing in the Independent this morning Stephen Glover observes

it is possible that some other people are about to make a mistake that could surpass Mr Davis's............If they (the Sun)have any sense they will promptly lower it, and go back to what they are best at doing, and have spent their time on this earth doing – producing newspapers.
In democracies, governments do not own newspapers, though they try to manipulate them, and sometimes succeed. For their part, newspapers and their proprietors do not own governments,

The Sun will stand against Davis

With it now unlikely that Labour will put up a candidate to stand against David Davis,this morning brings news that ex Sun editor and Murdoch supporter Kelvin MacKenzie

Appearing last night on Andrew Neil's show last night and on the Today programme,he said that if Labour did not stand he would stand up for Britain's battle against terrorism and subsversion.

Being entirely honest,Kelvin said that both Rupert Murdoch and Sun editor Rebecca Wade has asked him to stand and he was the Sun's candidate.The paper has been the only paper to consistently stand alongside the government over the 42 day issue

A sun of the Times

As Guido points out,Rupert Murdoch

told a Lords Select Committee last year that whereas he does not interfere in his broadsheets, he acts as "a traditional proprietor" with his tabloids.

So the fact that the Sun is this morning endorsing Boris as the next mayor of London means that perhaps the Murdoch empire is shifting to the Tories?

Its editorial says

Boris may not be a political heavyweight. And his public image, that of an Old Etonian buffoon, belies his great intelligence.
He is smart and bursting with good ideas. We admire this intellectual energy and his new policies to reform the city of London

The good and the bad of interactive polititians

Laura Oliver at Online journalism news reports that

London mayoral candidates are using the web to bypass the mainstream media and answer questions put to them directly by the electorate.

and adds that

Crowdsourcing debate website Yoosk is running an online hustings, gathering questions to put to several of the candidates running in next month's election.
Readers submit questions for their specified candidates, other users then vote on the questions they want the candidates to answer

Of course there is a problem with this sort of interactivity.The Sun are running a question and answer session online with Boris Johnson and this was his answer to a qusetion about the smoking ban

What is the point of having local democracy if we don't leave decisions like this to a local level?
If I had my way, we would have an online referendum in London about whether to give boroughs back the power to give discretion over smoking to pubs and clubs

For the record his comments were quickly covered over by his minders as personal only and not part of Tory policy

Papers line up over the Euro result

Nothing divides the National press more than the European Union and thsi morning is no exception as Parliament votes not to have a referendum on the European treaty.

The usual suspects line up on both sides.

The Mail with a front page headline

A shaming day for democracy

The British people were finally denied a say on the EU constitution last night after a momentous day in the Commons.
MPs voted against holding a referendum on the biggest shift of power to Brussels for at least a decade.
This was despite pledges from both Labour and the Liberal Democrats that voters would have the chance to decide the issue.

Its leader describing the Day that Democracy died

The Sun says the Eu referendum is Brown bread

The “listening PM” ignored the demands of nine out of ten British voters and denied them the say he promised.
Mr Brown broke Labour’s 2005 general election pledge as he ordered his foot soldiers to reject a referendum.
However, 29 of his MPs rebelled and voted for a national poll.
Mealy-mouthed Lib Dems also broke their pledge to give the nation a say on the Lisbon Treaty.

And its editorial describes

it was cowardice that made Gordon Brown break his word over the EU Treaty referendum.
He reneged on his promise to hold one because he was scared of losing.
As a result, Mr Brown demeaned himself and damaged democracy

The Telegraph hasn't given up hope

Referendum campaigners admitted they had suffered a setback. But they refused to give up and said they were pinning their hopes on the House of Lords taking on the Commons and backing a referendum.
William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, said after the vote that he hoped peers in the Upper House would reverse the Commons vote and ensure Labour and the Lib Dems honoured their election promises to hold a referendum.

Whilst affiriming in its leading article that

In an unworthy display of political cynicism, the Government ordered its own MPs to vote against one of the manifesto pledges on which they were all elected.

The Mirror supports the Prime Minister describing how Gordon Brown wins historic victory on EU treaty

The PM told the Tories: "When will you wake up to the fact that 3.5 million jobs are dependent on our membership of the EU, that 700,000 companies are trading with Europe, that 60 per cent of our trade is with Europe?"

Its editorial telling us that

Eurosceptics last night suffered a devastating defeat from which they will never recover.
By rejecting a referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon by 63 votes, the House of Commons passed a point of no return

The Independent describes

Victory for the Government in last night's vote on whether there ought to be a national referendum on the Lisbon treaty was the right result adding that

it should be quite clear to the objective observer that this treaty does not represent a shift in Britain's relationship with the European Union worthy of a referendum, no matter what the die-hard Eurosceptic lobby maintains.