Bagehot's notebook

THERE have been some sweeping historical claims made in the wake of last week's unrest, with commentators of left and right decrying an unprecedented collapse in moral standards, parenting and discipline among the young. There have been cultural claims too, with calls to blame African-American rap music from broadcast.

Here is the Daily Mail's Melanie Phillips, giving it both barrels with her assertion that:

The violent anarchy that has taken hold of British cities is the all-too-predictable outcome of a three-decade liberal experiment which tore up virtually every basic social value.

The married two-parent family, educational meritocracy, punishment of criminals, national identity, enforcement of the drugs laws and many more fundamental conventions were all smashed by a liberal intelligentsia hell-bent on a revolutionary transformation of society.

Those of us who warned over the years that they were playing with fire were sneered at and smeared as Right-wing nutters who wanted to turn the clock back to some mythical golden age.

From the left, here is the Daily Mirror's Paul Routledge, attacking foreign music and British materialism:

The mayhem erupted overnight, but it has been building for years. And putting more police on the streets – while vital to end the threat to life and property – will not solve the crisis.

I blame the pernicious culture of hatred around rap music, which glorifies violence and loathing of authority (especially the police but including parents), exalts trashy materialism and raves about drugs.

The important things in life are the latest smart phone, fashionable trainers and jeans and idiot computer games. No wonder stores selling them were priority looting targets.

On the BBC, there was the bizarre and clunking intervention by David Starkey, the historian of Tudor England, who complained on Newsnight that working class young whites had "become black", or as he put it:

The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion... Black and white, boy and girl operate in this language together. This language, which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that has intruded in England. This is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country.

Allison Pearson blames frightened, cowed and unhelpful parents in the Daily Telegraph, writing:

How did we end up with some of the most indisciplined and frighteningly moronic youngsters in Europe? How come our kids are the best at being bad? There’s no use blaming the police; it’s the parents, stupid...A friend who works in an inner-London comprehensive with boys twice her size is not allowed to send them to the headmaster. Faced with full-frontal rudeness or casual violence, Clare must first follow school policy and ask, “Darren, are you ready to receive the discipline message?” ...During my childhood in the Sixties, teachers and parents were still on the same side; today, you would be a fool to take that coalition of adults for granted. Darren’s parents are likely to attend any conference on their son’s behaviour with a snarling attitude, and maybe a pitbull to match

These are bold claims, amounting to a thesis that Britain has been wrecked and transformed from a familiar, law-abiding spot to an alien hell hole in just three or four decades. But here is an odd thing, surely: go back precisely three decades and you get to the summer of 1981, scene of some of the nastiest riots in modern British history, when racially charged violence saw tracts of Brixton in south London and Toxteth in Liverpool burn for days.

Seeking guidance, Bagehot decided to go off-line and read some books. From the shelves of the London Library, a gem: "Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears" a calm and witty history of moral panics that have gripped England over the ages, published in 1982, and written by a Bradford University academic, Geoffrey Pearson (later at Goldsmiths). The book is out of print, so I trust I will be forgiven (not least by Professor Pearson) for quoting from it at length: it is a brilliant survey.

Just what happens if we take a time machine back three decades, to the time before the revolutionary transformation identified by Melanie Phillips?

Well, "Hooligan" records, you find front-page editorials like this one from the Daily Express of July 7th 1981, stating:

Over the past twenty years or so, there has been a revulsion from authority and discipline... There has been a permissive revolution... and now we all reap the whirlwind

You find editorials and columnists seeming to blame the decline on black immigration. Here is the Sunday Telegraph of November 29th 1981:

Brixton is the iceberg tip of a crisis of ethnic criminality which is not Britain's fault—except in the sense that her rulers quite unnecessarily imported it

Thanks to Professor Pearson's painstaking researches, the time machine can be ridden smoothly much further. At each stop, there are voices warning that the golden age of the past has been wrecked, and suddenly Britain is a dreadful place.

Here is Sir Keith Joseph, the Conservative politician, in 1974, declaring:

For the first time in a century and a half, since the great Tory reformer Robert Peel set up the Metropolitan police, areas of our cities are becoming unsafe for peaceful citizens by night, and some even by day

"Hooligan" compares the 1958 and 1978 Conservative Party annual conferences. In 1978, buffetted by calls from the floor for a return to the birch and "Saturday night floggings" for football hooligans, it notes, the future home secretary William Whitelaw pledged a new regime of short-sharp-shock Detention Centres modelled on army discipline.

And in 1958? The agenda included a debate on a "disturbing increase in criminal offences", and speakers asserting that "our wives and mothers, if they are left alone in the house at night, are frightened to open their doors", and that "over the past 25 years we in this country, through misguided sentiment, have cast aside the word "discipline", and now we are suffering from it". Delegates fumed over the "leniency" of modern courts and the way that young people were "no longer frightened of the police". Over calls from the floor for a return to flogging, the home secretary R A Butler pledged a programme of building short-sharp-shock Detention Centres, wherein "there should be a maximum of hard work and a minimum of amusement."

Still, no African-American rap music to corrupt the young, at least. Alas, "Hooligan" notes, the country was in the grip of a moral panic about rock and roll. In a 1956 front page editorial, headlined "Rock 'n Roll Babies" the Daily Mail declared:

It is deplorable. It is tribal. And it is from America. It follows rag-time, blues, dixie, jazz, hot cha-cha and the boogie-woogie, which surely originated in the jungle. We sometimes wonder whether this is the negro's revenge.

What of parents, surely free to smack and belt their way to discipline in those days?

Not according to the Recorder of Bradford, Frank Beverley, recorded in his law court in 1951 inveighing on the crimes that could be traced to poor parenting:

Parents at this time, unfortunately, do not take sufficient care in bringing up their children. They expect someone else to be responsible.

Back to 1932, and a guide to the work of boys' clubs lamented:

The passing of parental authority, defiance of pre-war conventions, the absence of restraint, the wildness of extremes, the confusion of unrelated liberties, the wholesale drift away from churches

Thanks, again, to Geoffrey Pearson's research, here is the Times of 1898, sorrowing that fathers no longer saw fit to save a "scapegrace" son from prison "by loyally and sounding whipping him," and quoting a horrified magistrate's view that:

it is melancholy to find that some parents are not ashamed to confess that children of seven or eight years old are entirely beyond their control

Still, at least no computer games, eh? Alas, here is M.G. Barnett, author of "Young Delinquents" (Methuen, 1913) warning readers that silent films present children with "a direct incentive to crime, demonstrating, for instance, how a theft could be perpetrated". Small wonder that the Times of the same year editorialised:

All who care for the moral well-being and education of the child will set their faces like flint against this new form of excitement

Back to 1900, and the Contemporary Review is fretting about how the "garbage" infecting music hall programmes "glorifies immorality", while in his 1905 work "Manchester Boys", Charles Russell draws a direct link between murders enacted on stage and later "instances of violence on the part of young men, in the back streets of the city."

August has often been a tricky month. There was a moral panic in August 1898, after Bank Holiday disorder that saw 200 involved in a fist-fight in the Old Kent Road, and 88 people hauled before the Marylebone court in a single day. Matters were not helped when, in October 1898, a street mob attacked police officers dealing with a domestic dispute. There were loud cries of "Boot them" as the constables were kicked and assaulted.

In 1883, London police were armed for the first time amid fears of a crimewave by armed burglars, a step seen as "un-English" by the press.

The great "garotting" panic of 1862 centred on lurid reports of a new form of mugging involving strangulation, and led to the restoration of flogging as a punishment, shortly after it had been abolished. The Times sadly concluded that England now resembled a foreign land:

Our streets are actually not as safe as they were in the days of our grandfathers. We have slipped back to a state of affairs that would be intolerable even in Naples

Back to 1840s and the Industrial Revolution. Professor Pearson meticulously notes the widespread moral panic about the collapse of ancient, rural moral codes in the face of rapid urbanisation, the rise of working mothers and the spread of child labour (feared because it put money in the pockets of impressionable youths). "Hooligan" records an 1842 House of Commons debate, which heard how the "morals of children are tenfold worse than formerly".

Still, at least no Jamaican patois, eh? Ah no, the same Commons debate saw an MP denouncing parts of the country suffering a "preposterous epidemic of a hybrid negro song".

In London, 1815 sees the foundation of the Society for Investigating the Causes of the Alarming Increase in Juvenile Delinquency in the Metropolis. 1751 sees Henry Fielding's "Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers" (Fielding fingered "too frequent and expensive diversions among the lower kind of people"). The seventeenth century saw moral panics about violent and rowdy apprentices, as well as about organised fighting among gangs (wearing coloured ribbons to identify their troops). Professor Pearson ends with the sixteenth century and puritan fears about, if not gangsta rap, popular songs that treated criminals as heroes.

Now, none of this is much comfort if you live in one of the areas of England that has just been looted or burned. None of this takes away from the fact that this country has some serious social problems involving young people and children: Britain tops European league tables for teenage pregnancy, and has dropped down international rankings for educational achievement.

But for all its wit, "Hooligan"—written at a time of really horrible racial tension in Britain—had a serious purpose: to urge readers in 1982 to avoid moral panic and a rush to historically-illiterate judgement. Its lessons hold just as true today.

THIS week's print column looks at the puzzle of better press regulation, and offers a tentative solution. It will be my last column until mid-August, and this blog will also be taking a summer break. Readers from Brussels days may remember the drill: if you are an Economist subscriber, I am up a French Alp (and thank you). If you are a burglar, I am at home training my new Rottweiler, Fang.

Here is the column:

BRITAIN needs a new approach to press regulation. The goal seems straightforward enough: newspapers that remain robustly (indeed raucously) free, which are less flamboyantly horrible, and yet make enough money to survive.

On July 20th David Cameron unveiled a band of worthies, led by a judge, and gave them a year to outline new rules for the press (among other tasks). Signalling an end to pure self-regulation, Mr Cameron talks of a watchdog that is “effectively independent” from government. He has hinted that a model might be found in the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), an industry-funded body that mostly uses peer pressure to police advertising, but can call on legal “backstops”—official regulators with the power to punish stubborn offenders. The leader of the Labour opposition, Ed Miliband, talks of an “independent” watchdog that—unlike the current Press Complaints Commission (PCC)—does not include serving editors in its ranks. He wants it to wield investigative powers and the right to make titles pay compensation and run corrections prominently.

It all sounds sensible, but there is a complication. No part of this three-way puzzle—creating a press that is free, less nasty and sustainable—can be solved in isolation. Just consider what the past few weeks say about British newspapers.

In one sense, the phone-hacking crisis offers encouraging news. When other checks and balances (the police, governments, Parliament) failed, it was the serious press—led by the Guardian—that exposed alleged criminality at the News of the World. That should give pause to politicians with daft ideas, such as the former Labour leader, Lord Kinnock, who called for a charter compelling newspapers to be politically impartial, like broadcasters.

But the same story could also carry less cheering headlines. The scandal has been a triumph for the bit of the industry that makes no money: the Guardian recently announced annual cash losses of £33m ($53m) and is about to sack lots of staff. It has been a disaster for the bit that makes money. Before Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation euthanised the News of the World for being overly vile, the Sunday tabloid and its daily sister, the Sun, posted decent profits (subsidising two loss-making Murdoch broadsheets, the Times and Sunday Times, in the process).

Equally, it is encouraging that (albeit very late in the day) criminal acts by the press brought serious consequences: arrests, resignations and the sight of Mr Murdoch and his son hauled before a committee of the House of Commons. Logically, that would seem to suggest that the priority should be doing what it takes to ensure lawbreaking is tackled, and is not ignored. Politicians have duly proposed ways to rein in press groups with the power to cow those paid to watch over them.

Mr Cameron promises less cosiness with media bigwigs, and more openness about meetings granted to them. (Unless it is the other way round: asked by MPs about his frequent meetings with prime ministers, Mr Murdoch growled: “I wish they’d leave me alone”.) As for Mr Miliband, he wants Mr Murdoch’s empire dismantled—though he has not explained who might buy its broadsheets, which lose the thick end of a million pounds a week.

Alas, tackling lawbreaking does not, on its own, fix Britain’s feral press. Many routine acts of press cruelty—shouting through a widow’s letterbox, paparazzi making the children of a celebrity adulterer cry—are legal.

Jack Straw, a former Labour justice secretary, suggested this month that the knottiest aspect of press regulation involves not lies but private things that are true. He wants a new civil wrong of infringement of privacy, to match rules on defamation. More controversially, Mr Straw told the Commons that any new controls would have to be imposed by statute. He noted that, earlier this year, Express Newspapers (publisher of the Daily Express and Daily Star) simply walked out of the voluntary PCC. “Very wise words,” the prime minister told Mr Straw in reply.

You going to make me?

In short, politicians seem minded to compel newspapers to sign up to a new press code. Yet there is cross-party consensus that an Ofpress, licensing journalists or imposing impartiality, would be a step too far. Alas, if Mr Cameron and colleagues think the ASA model offers a happy halfway house between compulsion and self-regulation, they may not be right. Guy Parker, the ASA’s chief executive, says most companies comply with rulings because they don’t want bad publicity. But with some rogues it is “vital” to have a “stick in the cupboard”. He means referral to the Office of Fair Trading, whose powers come from consumer-protection law, or, in the case of broadcasters, to Ofcom, a regulator with the doomsday power to suspend operating licences.

Nor is it clear how a compulsory press code would cover bloggers in pyjamas or gossips with a Twitter feed. These days reporters cannot be corralled with sanctions such as withholding press cards or access to press rooms.

Bagehot has a grand bargain to suggest. Give Mr Straw his civil wrong of infringing privacy. Then create a tougher but still non-statutory regulator. This would be a mediator offering succour to those being brutalised by the press. If mediation failed, its teeth would come from an array of clever sanctions, designed to hurt, and from the knowledge that the courts were the next stop. Access to mediation would give even pretty horrible newspapers, such as the Daily Express, an incentive to sign up.

In return, the press should be offered a much stronger public-interest defence, fixing a big defect in English libel law and boosting genuinely investigative and campaigning reporting. Some newspapers will cavil, arguing that without sensation and intrusion they cannot survive. Tough. The alternatives are worse.

"THIS is the most humble day of my life," Rupert Murdoch told members of the House of Commons, after the media, culture and sports select committee summoned the global media tycoon before them to explain the phone-hacking, police-bribing, politician-bullying ways of his British press titles. Having established his humility, Mr Murdoch then spent more than two hours telling the MPs that he was—in essence—much too important and busy to have known what his feckless underlings were up to.

Mr Murdoch repeatedly stressed how ashamed and sorry he was that his Sunday tabloid, the News of the World had snooped on the voicemails of a mobile phone belonging to Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old schoolgirl whose abduction and murder became front-page news in 2002. He talked of his father, a great reporter, bequeathing him his first newspaper with instructions to use it for good purposes. At times, especially when struggling to hear questions, he looked all of his 80 years. But again and again his defence rested on the idea that he was simply too grand to know about the ethical lapses in one of his newsrooms. That is probably a shrewd legal strategy, but it is unlikely to help Mr Murdoch much in the court of British public opinion.

It was gripping human theatre, despite the best efforts of many of the assembled committee members to blow their big confrontation, asking open-ended or irrelevant questions (my prize for worst question goes to the MP who asked what sort of coaching the Murdochs had had before their parliamentary appearance).

Some have written that Rupert Murdoch came across as a frail, diminished figure, comparing his appearance to the final moments of the Wizard of Oz. I disagree. Thumping the table with the palm of his hand for emphasis (despite nervous signals from his wife to stop) Mr Murdoch showed flashes of something I can only describe as raw power, notably when any MP seemed about to patronise him.

Thus when an MP suggested employees had kept Mr Murdoch in the dark about the phone-hacking scandal, Mr Murdoch came to life, growling:

Nobody kept me in the dark, I may have been lax in not asking, but [the News of the World] was such a tiny part of our business.

The tabloid represented less than 1% of his company, he explained. He employed 53,000 people round the world. At his side, his son, James Murdoch, took the same line, arguing that at one point a six figure pay-off to a victim of phone-hacking had been too small to need the approval of his father, "as chairman and chief executive of a global company."

If they make a movie of the scene, perhaps Jack Nicholson could capture the glowering menace and dark comedy of some of the older Mr Murdoch's lines, but few others. Asked by an MP, primly, if he had frequent meetings with British prime ministers, Mr Murdoch replied, with the faintest hint of a smile: "I wish they'd leave me alone."

Another moment of telling cynicism about the wickedness of the world was provoked when a Scottish Labour MP asked if he regretted the high cost to his company of the phone-hacking scandal. The MP referred to the way Mr Murdoch's global company News Corporation was forced to abandon a bid to increase its stake in BSkyB, a highly profitable satellite television network, from 39% to 100%, by the threat of a parliamentary vote against the takeover.

At this mention of a deal worth hundreds of millions of pounds, Mr Murdoch's mood of contrition seemed to fade a bit. A lot of people had different agendas in building "hysteria" around the deal, he said, with a sort of resigned, weary disgust: "They caught us with dirty hands and they built this hysteria around it."

Just for a moment, I wondered if we were watching the echt Rupert Murdoch. Then James Murdoch (smart suit, soft American accent, a lawyerly manner—Tom Cruise to his father's Jack Nicholson) quickly jumped in, assuring the MP that his firm had been "very clear" that "very serious allegations" had been levelled at the News of the World and this was a matter of "huge and sincere regret". The moment passed, and we were back to smooth denials of knowledge of wrongdoing, and assurances of full co-operation with future investigations.

A few MPs asked good questions. The surprise star was a Conservative newcomer elected in 2010, Louise Mensch, also known as Louise Bagshawe (the author of breathless "chick-lit" novels). I confess I have not been that impressed by what I had seen of Mrs Mensch previously. But after her waffling, pompous colleagues it was a relief today as she asked sharp, precise, coolly scornful questions. She asked about pay-offs backed with confidentiality clauses, about when precisely the Murdochs had known that phone-hacking involved victims of crime like Milly Dowler, and about whether, given the enormous reputational damage being done to News Corp, it might be time for James Murdoch to read through all the emails from an archive appearing to show rampant law-breaking among some employees, rather than referring to a sample he had seen. James Murdoch was left stammering by that one.

Her last question elicited the best answer of the day from Rupert Murdoch.

Mrs Mensch, looking and sounding like a clever young prosecution barrister, reminded Mr Murdoch that he had said Les Hinton, a former chief executive of News International (News Corp's British newspaper subsidiary), had resigned because he was the "captain of the ship" when wrongdoing took place. Is it not the case, sir, that you are the captain of the ship, she asked the elder Mr Murdoch? The magnate's pride seemed piqued, and he rose to the bait. "Of a much bigger ship," he rumbled.

Mrs Mensch did not blench. "It is a much bigger ship, but you are in charge of it. And as you said in earlier questions, you do not regard yourself as a hands-off chief executive, you work ten to 12 hours a day. This terrible thing happened on your watch. Mr Murdoch, have you considered resigning?"

"No," said Mr Murdoch.

"Why not?" said Mrs Mensch.

"Because," Mr Murdoch replied. "I feel that people I trusted, I'm not saying who, I don't know what level, have let me down. I think they behaved disgracefully and betrayed the company, and me. It's for them to pay. I think that, frankly, I'm the best person to clear this up."

For them to pay. That phrase pretty much summed up the whole session. It will not have done the Murdoch family many favours.

AUSTERITY Britain? Or a cunning Keynesian stimulus plan, imposed by stealth? If you will forgive the brief diversion from phone-hacking and other grisly matters of state, I bring news from London's streets, which now glisten with so much unswept glass that daily cycle commuters can expect a puncture a month (or, if you are Bagehot, two in as many weeks, plus a couple the month before).

At a pinch, Bagehot can change a front tyre, but now I am deep in middle age rear punctures (chains, gears) are a job for the cycle repair shop. Forking over my latest bundle of cash this morning, and that only after pleading for a slot from the overworked mechanics, I asked about business. A lot of punctures, I was told: the streets are not being cleaned as often now.

On balance, this is probably a win for the faltering British economy, I decided. Savings for hard-pressed local councils, plus gainful employment for lots of cycle mechanics (though presumably overtime is down for street sweepers).

Either way, it is quite a tax on cycle commuters: one rear puncture wipes out the nominal gains I bank mentally from not taking the bus for a week.

I shall have to seek inspiration from my favourite Argentine joke (told to me by a former resident of Buenos Aires in the 1960s). An old man, late home, assures his angry wife that he has a good explanation: "I walked home rather than taking the bus, my dove, and so I saved us two pesos," he quavers. "Ay, que tontería," she grumbles. "If you had walked home rather than taking a taxi, you could have saved us 50 pesos."

AFTER the first fortnight or so, constant gloom and indignation loses its charm. My print column this week argues that, in fact, there are reasons to be optimistic amidst all the depressing revelations about Britain's press, police and politics. Why? Well, instead of drifting into a sort of helpless fatalism, the signs are that the British want to fix this mess. We are not ready to live in a country where official corruption is greeted with shrugged shoulders. British political leaders signal that they don't want to live in a country where governments exert a tight, often unseen grip on what is reported. Good.

Here's the column:

BIG earthquakes are events of special horror. Long after their immediate terrors have passed, it takes survivors time to trust, fully, in the solidity of the ground. Yet some good can also come of them. Earthquakes can bring instant transparency to murky societies, exposing the greedy who put up shoddy buildings or the officials bribed to look the other way.

Britain is enduring a political earthquake, its third in as many years. After the banking crisis revealed ineptitude in high places, and then a scandal broke over parliamentary expenses, parts of the press stand accused of lawbreaking on an industrial scale. The tale of woe is rehearsed in more detail elsewhere in the paper (see our briefing). But what will be the effects on politics?

In terms of the immediate impact on Westminster, the picture could hardly be clearer. David Cameron has had a bad crisis, while Ed Miliband has had his best ever week as leader of the opposition. To be more precise, Mr Cameron has had to deal with two parallel scandals centred on Rupert Murdoch's Sunday tabloid, the News of the World. The first—Mr Cameron's closeness to executives from that paper's parent company, News International—was handled with aplomb. All party leaders were too cosy with press bosses because we wanted their support, the prime minister declared. That candour would have earned Mr Cameron credit were it not for his second headache: his decision to employ a tainted former News of the World editor, Andy Coulson, as his communications chief between 2007 and January this year: an indefensible blunder for which he has yet to apologise.

Mr Miliband's boldness involved not candour but speed. He was quick to call for heads to roll at News International, then to call for Mr Murdoch to drop a bid to buy all of BskyB, a satellite broadcaster. When it became clear the government would lose a vote called by Labour on the takeover, Mr Cameron offered belated Tory support and also appointed a judge to head up a public inquiry. In an ultimate tribute, even Mr Murdoch has muttered to friends that Mr Miliband played his cards well.

If the immediate political consequences are fairly clear, the deeper crisis of trust is harder to measure. The British were already struggling to retain their faith that—broadly—theirs is a country in which wrongdoing in high places (exposed, as often as not, by the ferocious British press) is punished without fear or favour. It is possible that this third great shaking of the ethical landscape will trigger an enduring, unhappy transformation. Perhaps voters will drift from their current mood of corrosive cynicism towards the full-blown fatalism that blights some nearby democracies, where even those mired in sleaze are routinely re-elected. Others take an alternative, though equally gloomy view. They predict that Britain's rulers may seize the chance to impose political controls on the press, aping neighbouring countries in which government leaders can sack television news anchors with a phone call, and ministers routinely "read over" (ie, censor) interviews after they have been conducted.

The British want this fixed

Bagehot is more optimistic. This third shaking of British public trust is a dangerous moment, but some good may yet come of it. True, there is a lot of cynicism about: one poll, by ComRes, found that 80% of voters did not trust the media in the wake of the latest scandals, while 56% did not trust any of the main party leaders to rid British politics of corruption.

But dig deeper, and the British public are not ready to accept that their country is beyond fixing, or that the press would be better off muzzled by those in power. To put it in rather jingoistic terms, Britain is not resigned to becoming either Italy or France. A big majority of British respondents told YouGov, another pollster, that rival newspapers had "rightly" exposed serious allegations against the News of the World. Fully 86% wanted a public inquiry into the scandal: the British may dislike politicians, but they still have faith in a probe led by a judge.

There is also reason to believe British politicians when they say they are united in regretting their earlier servility towards the Murdoch press. It is easy to scoff at political big beasts bleating about their fear of the tabloids. You know how it is, Mr Cameron told MPs in one of the week's more depressing revelations: "Your bins are gone through by some media organisation, but you hold back from dealing with it because you want good relations with the media." Labour's Lord Mandelson (a dark master of spin to two prime ministers) added this week that all parties had been cowed by the press, "because we were too fearful".

But in fact Mr Murdoch occupies a distinct place in British politics. In America, he is straightforwardly a voice on the right thanks to assets such as Fox News: it is hard to imagine Republicans and Democrats agreeing on much about him. In Britain, Mr Murdoch is, in effect, an avatar of power in its purest form: his papers stridently support parties that are winning, backing both Labour and the Conservatives in their day. It is plausible that British parties could see a common interest in curbing his power.

A final reason for (wary) optimism: there is cross-party agreement on the perils of government regulation of the press. The scandal is likely to widen: other newspapers will surely find themselves on the rack soon. Police officers will start being arrested. Expect calls to muzzle the press, as the public feels the ground shifting again. For now, Mr Miliband says his instinct continues to be for self-regulation. Mr Cameron talks of "independent" regulation with more teeth, but also a press that makes politicians' lives "miserable a lot of the time". That certainly sounds like Britain. Politicians must keep it that way, strengthening and not demolishing the institutions of their raucous, flawed democracy. Public trust has been terribly shaken. It can be rebuilt.

THE GROUND continues to slip under the feet of the British politico-media establishment as the scandal of tabloid misconduct and phone-hacking deepens.

In the latest development, David Cameron's coalition government—forced to choose between an embarrassing public u-turn and being seen to back Rupert Murdoch—plumped for the humiliating about-face.

Mr Cameron has been neatly cornered by Ed Miliband, leader of the opposition Labour Party, who has tabled a non-binding motion to be voted on by the House of Commons tomorrow, saying: "This House believes it is in the public interest for Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation to withdraw its bid for BSkyB."

A Downing Street spokesman confirmed earlier this afternoon that the government will vote in favour of this Labour motion, with the exception of the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, who has a quasi-judicial role in taking a final decision on whether News Corp should be allowed to bid for ownership of the whole of the BSkyB satellite television network (in which Mr Murdoch's firm currently has a controlling stake).

The Liberal Democrats, junior partners in the Conservative-led coalition, had already signalled that their MPs would vote in favour of the Labour motion.

Mr Miliband has been greatly energised by the phone-hacking scandal, which allows him (a) to take opportunistic potshots of the government of the day, safe in the knowledge that as opposition leader he is not bound by irritating details like due legal process and (b) to indulge his inner lefty by taking potshots at Mr Murdoch, exorcising years of Labour guilt at sucking up to the press tycoon and his newspaper empire. But fair's fair, Mr Miliband has played his cards skilfully, and as opposition leader, his job is not to be helpful in such moments, but to oppose.

The Guardian's Andrew Sparrow makes the point that this decision to take a symbolic swipe at Mr Murdoch is especially striking given the prime minister's response a week ago when the Labour MP and former culture secretary Ben Bradshaw asked him whether wrongdoing at Murdoch papers had any bearing on News Corp's fitness to own the whole of BSkyB. Mr Sparrow writes:

Last week, at PMQs, Ben Bradshaw suggested that Cameron should block the takeover on the grounds that News Corporation's assurances could not be trusted. Using a phrase that was seen by some as a jibe at Bradshaw's homosexuality, Cameron mocked the idea.

"If you do not follow the correct legal processes, you will be judicially reviewed, and all the decisions that you would like to make from a political point of view will be struck down in the courts. You would look pretty for a day, but useless for a week."

This week Cameron's stance is very different.

Rupert Murdoch, his son James and Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International (parent company of the Murdoch newspapers in Britain) have been invited to appear before the House of Commons culture, media and sport committee next Tuesday. The same committee gave serving and retired Metropolitan Police bosses a roasting earlier today (while they accused News International of trying to thwart their investigations), and the initial assumption was that the News Corp bosses would decline to appear before MPs, citing the need to deal with police questions and possible court cases first. However, in the latest startling development of the day, the Conservative chairman of the committee, John Whittingdale, told the BBC that he had been informed that Rupert Murdoch and his lieutenants would attend next week's parliamentary hearing.

To understand just how far we have come in a short few weeks, I took another look at a speech given by James Murdoch to the 2009 Edinburgh Television Festival. At the time, Mr Murdoch's speech attracted attention for the passion with which the younger Mr Murdoch attacked the BBC's dominant, state-funded position in the broadcast and internet market, saying the scale and scope of the BBC's current activities and future ambitions was "chilling".

But with hindsight, the remarkable aspect of the speech was the passion with which Mr Murdoch attacked regulation of the broadcast media, as practised in Britain today. He really meant it, suggesting that the authorities had no business policing things such as political impartiality in television news (ie, the thing that makes Sky News in Britain so different from Fox News in America). Regulators, he said, should step in only when there was "evidence of actual and serious harm to the interests of consumers".

In essence, his argument boiled down to two big points. First, that even supposedly impartial news is always biased (because of things like the editorial choice of stories) so even aspiring to neutrality is nonsense. Second, that regulators like Ofcom (the British regulator of commercial broadcasting) are unaccountable, because true accountability is earned by selling your product commercially to lots and lots of people.

Or in Mr Murdoch's own words:

the system is concerned with imposing what it calls impartiality in broadcast news. It should hardly be necessary to point out that the mere selection of stories and their place in the running order is itself a process full of unacknowledged partiality. The effect of the system is not to curb bias – bias is present in all news media - but simply to disguise it. We should be honest about this: it is an impingement on freedom of speech and on the right of people to choose what kind of news to watch. How in an all-media marketplace can we justify this degree of control in one place and not in others?...

...Other areas of the media have been able to get by without it. There is a strong alternative tradition with at least four centuries behind it – first of pamphlets and books, later of magazines and newspapers. From the broadsides of the Levellers, to the thundering 19th century Times, to The Sun fighting for the rights of veterans today – it is a tradition of free comment, of investigative reporting, of satirizing and exposing the behaviour of one’s betters.

Yes, the free press is fairly near the knuckle on occasion – it is noisy, disrespectful, raucous and quite capable of affronting people – it is frequently the despair of judges and it gets up the noses of politicians on a regular basis. But it is driven by the daily demand and choices of millions of people. It has had the profits to enable it to be fearless and independent. Great journalism does not get enough credit in our society, but it holds the powerful to account and plays a vital part in a functioning democracy.

Would we welcome a world in which The Times was told by the government how much religious coverage it had to carry?

In which there were a state newspaper with more money than the rest of the sector put together and 50% of the market?

In which cinemas were instructed how many ads they were allowed to put before the main feature?

In which Bloomsbury had to publish an equal number of pro-capitalist and pro-socialist books?...

...

Above all we must have genuine independence in news media. Genuine independence is a rare thing. No amount of governance in the form of committees, regulators, trusts or advisory bodies is truly sufficient as a guarantor of independence. In fact, they curb speech. On the contrary, independence is characterised by the absence of the apparatus of supervision and dependency.

Independence of faction, industrial or political.
Independence of subsidy, gift, or patronage.

Independence is sustained by true accountability – the accountability owed to customers. People who buy the newspapers, open the application, decide to take out the television subscription – people who deliberately and willingly choose a service which they value. And people value honest, fearless, and above all independent news coverage that challenges the consensus. There is an inescapable conclusion that we must reach if we are to have a better society.

The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit.

Mr Murdoch is right that the state-funded BBC, especially in its online operations, needs to be exceedingly careful not to smother commercial rivals and start-ups. He is right to challenge the idea of statutory regulation of the press, and right that the printed press would wither if subjected to the kind of political impartiality rules upheld in British broadcasting. Only last night, Bagehot was alarmed when a Tory MP and former press secretary for David Cameron, George Eustice, suggested on BBC 2's Newsnight that a future model of regulation for the British printed press should be based on the rules now used to police the broadcast media (11 minutes into video).

But it is a mark of how far Mr Murdoch's proud, profitable, innovative company has fallen that his 2009 speech—including his claim that commercial success equals democratic accountability—now sounds hollow and hubristic. A company that has done more than most to promote a great social good—reporting the news in a way that is commercially sustainable—is currently close to giving for-profit news a bad name. It is hard to imagine that was the Murdoch family's intention.

MY PRINT column, written before the closure of the News of the World and the arrest of its former editor, Andy Coulson, looks for lessons in a tumultuous week for David Cameron. Here it is:

AS A rule, a Royal Air Force transport over Afghanistan is a poor place for collecting political intelligence. The engines are loud and the ride not smooth, as pilots swoop and roll to lessen the threat of attack from the ground. Thus it signalled that something urgent was afoot when David Cameron’s director of communications, Craig Oliver, began clambering about on a cramped flight out of Kabul on July 5th. He wanted to ask reporters accompanying the prime minister their thoughts on some breaking news.

The two-day trip had already been touched by crisis. A plan to visit the town of Lashkar Gah, intended to show off improving security, was called off after a young soldier—one of 9,500 British troops in Afghanistan—went missing nearby, and was later found dead. Bagehot watched Mr Cameron handle the grim setback with assurance. As British forces searched for the soldier, the prime minister declared he would not use valuable helicopters on his own account. His sympathies expressed, he returned to his main task: explaining what Britain is doing in Afghanistan.

Mr Oliver’s breaking news involved a grubbier crisis: fresh allegations against the News of the World, a tabloid mired in ever-widening claims that it obtained scoops by illegally hacking into the mobile-phone messages of celebrities, politicians and other public figures. This time, the accusation was that the paper had hacked into the voice-mail of Milly Dowler, a schoolgirl whose abduction and murder in 2002 were front-page news.

Mr Cameron’s reaction was less assured. Questioned amid the shady pines and fountains of the presidential palace in Kabul, he blustered, calling the Milly Dowler allegations “really appalling,” and if true, a “dreadful situation”. A day later, back in the House of Commons, he was still awkward. He bowed to demands from the opposition Labour Party for a public inquiry into phone-hacking. He agreed that police foot-dragging over the affair looked troubling. But then he said a public inquiry (or inquiries) might have to wait until the same police completed a criminal probe. Labour gleefully called Mr Cameron “out of touch”.

There are some straightforward reasons for Mr Cameron’s caution. Until January this year, the Downing Street head of communications was Andy Coulson, a former News of the World editor who resigned in 2007 after his royal correspondent and a private investigator were jailed for conspiracy to intercept voice-mail messages (Mr Coulson denied any knowledge of wrongdoing). Saying Mr Coulson deserved a second chance, Mr Cameron hired him as his PR chief, then stood by him until months of digging, notably by the Guardian, forced the ex-editor to resign for a second time in January. (The prime minister should send the Guardian flowers: if Mr Coulson were still in office, his whole government would be in crisis.)

And like all recent prime ministers, Mr Cameron is close to bosses at News International, parent company of the News of the World, the Sun, Times and Sunday Times. He calls Rebekah Brooks, the firm’s chief executive, a friend. Alas, Mrs Brooks was News of the World editor when Milly Dowler’s phone was allegedly hacked (she says it is “inconceivable” she knew of such acts).

The confidence trick

But other lessons can be drawn from this week’s tale of two crises. Britain’s deployment in Afghanistan amounts to a three-sided puzzle of high politics. On one side, most British voters no longer understand why troops are still there: internal government polling shows only about 40% believe Britain’s presence helps protect national security. Against that, the British hate losing wars, and would dislike even a half-defeat in which a decade of spilled blood bought only a thuggish Afghanistan in which the Taliban play a big role. Finally, Mr Cameron is a junior partner with limited autonomy. British generals may dislike talk of pulling troops out of Afghanistan too soon, but Barack Obama is pulling tens of thousands out by September 2012.

Mr Cameron is confident in such tight spots. When public opinion is uncertain, Mr Cameron relishes explaining his case. Visiting Camp Bastion, an Ozymandian citadel that has sprung from the Afghan desert, he said the goal was not to create a “perfect country”, but an Afghanistan able to secure itself and deny terrorists a safe haven. In his telling, early thoughts of nation-building were unrealistic, then during the Iraq war the allies took their eyes off Afghanistan. Now, though winning hearts and minds is “helpful”, security unlocks the Afghan puzzle. Mr Cameron thinks that—for all the risks—setting a departure date (and making clear some Taliban will feature in a final political settlement) focuses minds in Kabul and among the British armed forces too. If his generals disagree, he will overrule them. In short, he is a man at ease with the exercise of formal authority.

In contrast, the sordid saga of phone-hacking revolves around low politics and the changeable tempests of mass opinion. In such a context, Mr Cameron’s confidence seems to desert him.

Consider the evidence. Alone in Mr Cameron’s rarefied inner circle, Mr Coulson offered Mr Cameron a gut feel for the popular mood. That, close observers say, helps explain why the ex-editor survived so long. Faced with loud popular or even press hostility—as over health-service reforms or planned changes to sentencing policy—Mr Cameron changes course.

Mr Cameron’s enemies accuse him of swaggering overconfidence. In fact, a week of twin crises—of war in Afghanistan and sleaze at home—suggests something more complex. Assured in his office, he is ill-at-ease in matters of raw power, and in the face of public fury. That timidity has led him to some of his worst mistakes, from policy U-turns to embracing Mr Coulson. And more crises lie ahead, of both high and low politics.

UPDATE: a short while after the posting of this blog entry, James Murdoch, the executive chairman of News International and head of international operations at News Corporation, announced that he was closing the News of the World newspaper. The final edition of the Sunday tabloid will be published this weekend and will not carry commercial advertising. In a statement, Mr Murdoch says the newspaper and News International had "failed to get to the bottom of repeated wrongdoing that occurred without conscience or legitimate purpose". The full text is here. The statement, some already are noting, does not preclude the launch of a seven day Sun operation.

LOWER a piece of bacon fat on a string above a box full of ferrets, and you will have some idea how the world of the British tabloid press looks today, as former colleagues, bosses and friends turn on each other with a snapping of sharp teeth and a glinting of narrow, yellow eyes.

Pressure is mounting on Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of the News of the World and the Sun, and current chief executive of News International, the mighty media group that owns those two tabloids as well as the Times and the Sunday Times.

It is getting hard to keep up with the torrent of new allegations, but at the moment the most lethal charge is that the NotW illegally hacked into the mobile telephone voice messages of the relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is a particular blow to a tabloid stable which has long wrapped itself in the flag, campaigning for “Our Boys” in the military and sponsoring annual “Milly” awards for brave servicemen and women.

Right on cue, papers from the NI stable have begun lashing out in all directions.

An especially choice article in the Sun this morning quotes MPs using parliamentary privilege to attack the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror, accusing the latter of using phone hacking to uncover a celebrity adultery story.

The Sun then turns on Andy Coulson, the former NotW editor who between 2007 and January of this year was communications director to David Cameron.

Here is an extract from the Sun’s report, congratulating its parent company for finding emails in corporate archives, fingering Mr Coulson:

Cops have also been handed fresh emails, which allegedly show that former News of the World editor and No10 press boss Andy Coulson condoned payments from his staff to bent police officers.

Documents from News International which appear to indicate Scotland Yard officers received payments from the paper have been formally referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the force said today.

The company said in a statement: "The fact that these developments came as a result of voluntary disclosure demonstrates full co-operation with the police and News International's determination as a company to deal responsibly and correctly with the issues that have arisen."

During the Commons debate, Mr Cameron said he took "full responsibility" for his decision to employ Mr Coulson, who quit in January.

Oddly, the report leaves out the bits of the parliamentary debate in which MPs alleged that Mrs Brooks and other NI executives had misled earlier parliamentary probes into phone hacking.

Amidst all this grisly murk, the day has at least seen a couple of moments of unintended comedy to lighten the gloom.

The first is this detail from the Guardian, which I shall treasure for a while:

News International (NI) continued its internal investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World. Senior sources said they were examining whether former News of the World journalists may have kept money claimed on company expenses instead of passing it on to police officers in exchange for stories. Paying police officers is itself illegal.

In other words, the paper’s bosses fear some staff may not have been honourable enough to pay policemen illegal bribes, but merely pretended to in order to trouser the cash.

The other moment of low comedy came on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, in a remarkable interview with a former head of the army and four star general, Lord Dannatt.

Lord Dannatt, it quickly emerged, was still having trouble coming to terms with the idea that when tabloid newspapers offer noisy support for “heroes” in the military, there might be a particle of self-interest involved.

Listen here, as the general audibly struggles with the suggestion from the presenter, Jim Naughtie, that it would amount to “hypocrisy” if the NotW really did hack into the phones of grieving military families, while all the while running sententious stories about "fallen heroes" and how much the paper cared for them. Here is a transcript:

Lord Dannatt: There is no doubt at all that the armed forces, and our deployed soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan in particular, have had great support from News International, from both the News of the World from the Sun, if you think about the annual military awards, the Millies, that was started and sponsored by the Sun, there is no doubt that they have given tremendous support. So therefore it is really very puzzling who has done what on the one hand, and who has done what on the other.

Naughtie: …there’s a hypocrisy involved, isn’t there?

Dannatt: Is it? There probably is an hypocrisy involved. Of course the issue which we can’t prejudge, and I really don’t know, is how far up if you like the News of the World or the Sun chain of command knowledge of this actually went. If it went to the very top, then I think it is desperately serious. But if it caps out at some level, then that is more handleable, and I think the whole support for the armed forces by News International is more understandable. But if it goes right to the top, then frankly one just stands back in absolute amazement.

Tune in next week, to hear Lord Dannatt reel on hearing that Al Capone’s donations to the Chicago Widows’ and Orphans Fund involved more than just altruism.

THE British public no longer understand why there are 9,500 members of the British armed forces in Afghanistan (if they ever did). The British public hate losing wars (and would not much like a half defeat in which a decade of spilled blood bought only a thuggish, fragile Afghan state in which the Taliban play a big role).

Those two pressures—for British troops to leave quickly, but not before something looking like progress has been achieved—mark the outside edges of the political space within which David Cameron’s Afghan policy operates.

The British prime minister is in Afghanistan today, and Bagehot is one of the reporters travelling with him. In briefings from Mr Cameron and British military chiefs, we were assured that those two pressures are not, in fact, in conflict, because the Afghan national army and police are finally gaining in professionalism and confidence, to the point that they will soon be able to take over responsibility for their own country’s security.

Mr Cameron has already made clear his plan to remove British combat forces by the end of 2014. He confirmed to us today his intention to bring a “modest” number home by the end of next year, in a mark of his growing confidence in Afghan forces, an announcement that follows last week’s declaration by President Barack Obama that tens of thousands of American troops will be coming home by September 2012, reversing a 2009 surge in troop numbers.

As the British prime minister and his commanders tell it, the very act of setting a deadline for withdrawal has concentrated minds wonderfully within the Afghan military and central government. Still more happily, those Afghans who suspected that foreigners planned to occupy their country permanently have been reassured that the American-dominated international force is serious about leaving.

In short, the argument goes, the situation is becoming a virtuous circle: something approaching success is in sight, and leaving soon makes that success more likely.

Britain’s most senior soldier, the chief of the defence staff General Sir David Richards, told us that the plan to leave by 2014 is “do-able” and that the unprecedented improvements visible among local security forces left allied commanders “in a comfortable place”.

Is such confidence justified? The 2011 fighting season is only now underway (delayed by a late opium poppy harvest, we are told) and has so far offered both good and bad news. Travelling with someone like a prime minister to a combat zone offers moments of high-level access, but much of the time is spent in helpless blindness as we reporters are ferried about in a security bubble.

Some British and American commanders have been almost comically positive about the situation on the ground. A British brigadier told us of recent successes, such as Afghan operations against drug warlords or the opening of a postal service between two southern towns, Marjah and Lashkar Gah. In the next breath he told us about some horrible recent events, such as the killing of 20 Afghan bus passengers by a roadside bomb on Highway Nine, or the growing intimidation of local farmers by the Taliban, and explained that this was “an indication of the desperate measures the insurgent is prepared to go to”. In Helmand province, he added, there had been several attempts to kill the governor and local police chief in the last few months. Each time, Afghan forces had thwarted the attacks without the need for foreign help, “though we remain in an overwatch position”.

Perhaps the brigadier is quite right: he is certainly better informed than I am. But the argument did seem to be that each piece of good news shows that things are going well, while each piece of bad news shows that things are going well.

While Bagehot is being cynical, I would note that though we heard endlessly about the growing confidence of Afghan commanders from British generals with clipped, calm tones, and American colonels with southern lilts, we have yet to hear a single Afghan to confirm these impressions. Indeed, we have yet to meet a single Afghan.

I was last in this country a decade ago, tagging along with the Northern Alliance as they pushed the Taliban and their Arab allies from towns like Taloqan and Kunduz. Back then in 2001, foreign correspondents were more or less tolerated guests of individual Afghan commanders, living and travelling in a rural world that was only barely touched by the outside world. American and allied ground forces were only a rumour, with special forces supposed to be somewhere high on the cliffs overlooking the nearby Amu River, near the ruins of a citadel built by the armies of Alexander the Great, where the capital of a toppled Corinthian column still peeped from the sand.

Today in 2011, travelling with a British prime minister, the country outside is felt and seen mostly as a threat: a glimpse of bright glare through an aircraft porthole, as an airman in helmet and body armour scans the ground for threats on a swift, plunging final approach, or farmers glimpsed for an instant through the dark glass of a speeding convoy.

I am writing this on the floor of a windowless room in a camp outside a city I am not allowed to name for security reasons. I can say that our day began in the Ozymandian sprawl of Camp Bastion, a dusty, sun-bleached military city in the south: a temporary citadel seemingly built to last. Afghanistan cannot be seen from within its grids of paved roads, lined with block after block of stacked shipping containers, camps of air-conditioned tents, a vast airfield with a pair of 10,000-foot runways, and mile after mile of blast walls of rocks and sand packed into metal and canvas cages.

It is July 4th, and the main canteen at the American marine corps base was decorated for Independence Day with large, carved and painted polystyrene models of the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell and a wobbly, three-times life-size turkey (painted purple). The sculptures were signed “Dadhi, Nepal” and the artist had added a Hotmail email address in a bid for fresh commissions. Breakfast was served by contractors from the Indian sub-continent and the Philippines. A bus with German number plates and a Filipino driver ferried us past a British forces post office with a red pillar box, marked with the queen’s EIIR monogram. Supper is a Sri Lankan curry and the sentries at the nearest airbase are Belgian and Mongolian.

Every briefing has been more bullish than the last, but there have also been some jarring, jolting moments. Early on today, it became clear that something had gone wrong near the southern town of Lashkar Gar. Mr Cameron had been due to fly down there by helicopter from the giant southern base of Camp Bastion, but very soon it became clear that trip had been cancelled, for what commanders would only say were “operational reasons”. Hours later, we were told first that an allied soldier was missing, then that the missing man was British. As night fell, news reached us that the body of the missing British soldier had been found, shot dead.

A single incident, however tragic for the family and friends of the soldier, does not by itself undermine the brave talk of progress. Nor does this latest loss of life change the fundamental calculation mentioned at the start: that the British public will not tolerate fighting in Afghanistan indefinitely, but will surely react harshly if the end is a scramble into chaos that mocks all the lives shed to date, both foreign and Afghan. It is not even clear how the British public will react when they realise that an exit strategy depends on talking to the Taliban. Since Mr Cameron took office a year ago, the British government has talked about Afghanistan almost exclusively as a security challenge, and dropped the talk that could be heard in Tony Blair’s day about the moral cause of freeing Afghans from Taliban oppression, helping Afghan girls attend school and other aspects of nation-building. In Afghanistan today, Mr Cameron talked of a campaign that had entered a new phase. “We are not here to create a perfect democracy, we are not here to create a perfect country,” he told a gathering of American marines and British troops this morning.

Asked about this later, the prime minister said the conflict in Afghanistan had possibly begun with expectations set at an unrealistic level. Then the start of war in Iraq had distracted the allies. Now, he suggested, such distractions were in the past. The overwhelming goal was now one of securing national security by denying terrorists the chance to open training camps in Afghanistan. That would require a strong army and police force, a central government able to extend the basics of governance to the provinces and good relations with Pakistan. At the same time, he conceded, it can be “hugely helpful” to win hearts and minds by helping girls to school, or by helping farmers get their goods to market. But there was a clear hierarchy of policies, he said, with security first.

It was a vintage display of Cameronian foreign policy: something that looks like realism but which is on closer inspection a low-ambition variety of optimism.

Will it do, as a strategy to reconcile the British public to a war of which they are thoroughly tired? Mr Cameron has given his troops, and the Afghan government, until the end of 2014 to bring this conflict to a formal end (though as one American colonel told me at Camp Bastion, after building two, 10,000-foot runways at that camp and laying reinforced concrete roads, “you gotta think” the outside world is planning to stick around for a while).

It will not feel like a satisfying end for any of those involved, but for Britain at least, it will feel like an ending. Perhaps that will do.

FROM Bagehot's office window, the usual view of Parliament and the London Eye is accessorised by hovering police helicopters: the tell-tale sign that demonstrators are marching on central London again. Today, it is the turn of teachers and other public sector workers, out on a one-day strike to protest against changes to their retirement benefits. Do the public support the strikers? The opinion polls are confused, to be honest: there are polls that show majorities supporting the right of teachers to strike over pension rights, but polls also showing opposition to this particular strike over pension rights. For the moment, the consensus among the big parties at Westminster is that the trade unions are making a mistake, though many wonder if the government will also start to get the blame if rolling strikes start to cause serious disruption in the autumn.

There is a lot of talk about the 1980s in the air. Leftish types accuse the government of trying to complete the wicked work of the Thatcher era, while voices on the right thunder about the need to get really tough with the unions and tackle fat cat, militant union bosses. As so often, when industrial tensions rise, the spectral figures of Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill seem to hang over the political landscape, and memories of the 1984 to 1985 clash between the then prime minister and miners' union leader. Are the 1980s coming back? I think not, is my hunch.

For this week's print column, I talked to people who remember the tumult of the 1980s well, whether as politicians or as participants in the strikes of the era. They have no desire to return to that turbulent decade, and all said that they felt what was happening now was very different. As part of my research, I visited the former mining town of Mexborough, in south Yorkshire. It is deep-red Labour country: the local MP is Ed Miliband, and the great majority of people I spoke to said they backed the June 30th strikes, if only out of instinct as trade union members. But they were also anxious that the unions would trigger a public backlash. You need the town to be 100% behind you to strike, and this town is split, one shopper said, and many others echoed that view.

Parents were irritated at having to find childcare for their children who could not go to school, I was told. There was sympathy for teachers and public sector workers, whose work was seen as badly paid and stressful (you know what little thugs kids are nowadays, more than one local said, with feeling). But at the same time, a lot of people volunteered the thought that "everybody knows" that there do need to be cuts, because the country went "spending mad", as one man put it. The core message of the coalition government about the importance of deficit reduction resonates, even in staunch Labour country.

Here is the column:

TO THIS day, two historical shadows loom over English towns such as Mexborough, a former mining town in the Labour heartland of south Yorkshire. The spectres are of two living but long-retired enemies: Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill, respectively the former prime minister and a miners’ union leader whose clash during the miners’ strike of 1984 and 1985 was a turning point in British industrial relations.

Mexborough will shed few tears when Lady Thatcher dies, says Howard Lawton, a former steelworker shopping in the high street, a bleak strip lined with charity and discount shops and stores offering payday loans. The former prime minister destroyed British industry to crush powerful unions, Mr Lawton charges, above all Mr Scargill’s National Union of Mineworkers. Like most Mexborough locals Bagehot interviewed this week, he backed a big national strike called for June 30th by teachers and other public-sector unions against changes to their pensions and a rise in their retirement age to 66.

Trade-union loyalty runs deep in Mexborough, whose local MP is Ed Miliband, the current Labour leader. So does a sense of physical solidarity. In Mexborough, 66 is old. The high street whirrs with electric three-wheeled scooters, carrying stick-thin ex-miners looking a decade older than their years. “People aren’t going to get to retire,” predicts Christine Barker, a former dental receptionist. Alan Hinchcliffe, a retired lorry driver now hunched in a scooter, fag in hand, rasps: “They didn’t complain about the people dying young in the mines and steel works, did they?”

Yet Mr Scargill—whose obduracy and militancy led his miners to crushing defeat—also haunts Mexborough. Backing for the strike is frequently tempered with anxiety that it will do no good. An ex-miner (“ten years down the Manvers pit”) worries that public-sector unions are making a grave mistake. “In the ’80s we had the miners’ strike, and what came out of that? Nothing.” Even John Coward, the local divisional secretary of the National Union of Teachers, one of the unions behind the June 30th strike, admits that securing public support is a challenge. The 1980s are remembered with bitterness, not triumphalism, he says: the era is seen as a civil war, “and a civil war that we lost”.

Such wary, painful memories extend far beyond spots like Mexborough to the seat of power in Westminster. Memories of the Thatcher-Scargill conflict divide British politics to this day, pushing some towards cautious pragmatism, and away from extreme partisan positions.

The cautious camp includes David Cameron, the prime minister. Allies stress that he is “not looking for a fight” with public-sector unions. They point to his choice of a former Labour cabinet minister, Lord Hutton, to advise the government on pensions reform. History makes Mr Miliband cautious, too. He called the June 30th strikes a “mistake”, and declared his party to be on the side of parents trying to send their children to school: an act of defiance towards the unions that provide most Labour Party funds. For Mr Miliband, says an aide, the 1980s are shorthand for a Conservative government and a trade-union movement both “hellbent on confrontation”, with the public paying the price.

Yet the cautious do not have it all their own way. There is a second camp that is happy to use the 1980s as a purely partisan call to arms. Andy Burnham, Labour’s education spokesman, told the House of Commons before the June 30th strikes that parents would blame the government if the dispute with teachers returned the country “to the 1980s”. Dave Prentis, leader of the largest public-sector union, Unison, accuses the government of “cutting further now than Thatcher dared”. Mark Serwotka, boss of the Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents civil servants, recently praised Mr Scargill’s “bravery”.

On the right, Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor of London (and a man whose ambitions may one day include a stab at his party’s leadership), called the government “lily-livered” for declining to consider a new law making it harder to call a strike. The Tory right cheered, knowing which alternative, non-lily-livered model of prime minister he had in mind.

A slew of conflicting polls suggest that voters are unsure what to think, backing the right of teachers to strike for pensions, but also supporting tougher strike laws. As spending cuts bite, and anger swells, pressures can only grow on the cautious camp.

They were there

But it has one great strength. Many who remember the 1980s best have no desire to revisit that decade. Eric Pickles, now the Tory communities and local government secretary, was a politician in the northern city of Bradford in the 1980s. He is a devoted Thatcherite, with a portrait of his heroine in his office. But, he says, some communities “sort of disappeared from the map” after the miners’ strike. Some Tory activists are gung-ho about the miners’ strike, but he is not, saying: “I find the most visceral were children then, or not even born.” Lord Kinnock, the Labour leader from 1983 to 1992, calls the Thatcher government “loathsome” for appearing not to “give a damn about the consequences” of wrenching economic change. But he blames Mr Scargill for refusing deals that could have saved some profitable mines. “Thatcher and Scargill deserved each other, nobody else did,” he says.

The 1980s, in some parts of Britain, did feel like a civil war. It was one that the Thatcher government had to win, and victory ended decades of national decline. But after a civil war, nobody decent should celebrate. The British people sense this instinctively. The government is right to be cautious: the current mood of public calm is a small miracle. Some unions seem bent on confrontation, alas. They should beware, and leave the 1980s, an unhappy decade, to its ghosts.

TODAY's Financial Times carries a letter from 14 Conservative MPs elected in the 2010 intake, who—the FT reports—are trying to create a new moderate school of Euroscepticism. The lead author, Chris Heaton-Harris, is a man to watch. He is a former member of the European Parliament and thus unusually knowledgeable about the workings of the European Union, while his robust dislike of European integration gives him credibility with his peers, who are probably the most Eurosceptic cohort of Tory MPs ever. I would not be astonished to see him in government before many of his contemporaries.

Bear with me as I quote from the letter at some length: it captures perfectly the mood among many MPs, I think.

Basically, it makes three points:

1. So far, Britain has "taken a back seat in the crisis affecting the eurozone". This needs rethinking because—through membership of the EU and the International Monetary Fund, and bilateral loans to Ireland—British taxpayers are "underwriting some €14bn in loan guarantees to Greece, Ireland and Portugal". Britain needs to move from the back seat and seek more control because:

the solutions to the crisis proposed by eurozone countries amount to no more than “throwing good money after bad” and will further expose the British taxpayer to any future economic meltdown." [Thus Britain should] "take the taxpayers’ side in resisting further bail-outs".

2. What is more, Britain should be more active because a meltdown of the euro zone as a whole would be unbelievably scary and expensive, or as they write:

New research by Open Europe shows that the UK now has an exposure to the eurozone of over €700bn, mostly via our banking system, €300bn of which is to the weaker eurozone economies.

3. The euro crisis leaves continental partners at our mercy, so this is a splendid moment to push for the things Britain has long wanted from the EU, namely a free-trade area with more liberalisation and less integration, and a smaller budget for the EU while you are at it. Or as they write:

The crisis affecting those countries that use the euro has created a political vacuum at the heart of Europe which we believe the UK government can use to shape the EU’s post-crisis order. In particular, the government must take a tougher approach than its predecessors, including the use of our veto to extract significant concessions. Ultimately, the UK needs to develop a bold new EU strategy aimed at changing Europe into a more competitive, vibrant and accountable trade bloc. We must take the taxpayers’ side in resisting further bail-outs and pushing for wide-ranging reform consistent with the liberalisation of trade, the principle of subsidiarity and the wholesale reduction of the waste for which the European Commission is responsible. Above all we must start getting some value in return for the significant sums that UK taxpayers contribute to the EU’s budget.

The thing is, I am not sure how points 1, 2 and 3 hang together. Point 1 is that Britain must take a grip because it already risks losing some portion of €14 billion in the event of a default by a struggling euro zone member, and so should resist increasing that exposure by insisting on an end to bail outs.

But Point 2 implies that Britain's potential losses from bail outs, though very annoying for a country that always thought the euro was a duff idea, are probably smaller than Britain's potential losses in the event of a euro zone meltdown. I draw this implication from the fact that 300 is a bigger number than 14 (and 700 is bigger still, should the entire euro zone melt down). So if Point 1 is "leave the back seat, grab the steering wheel and demand an end to bail outs", it seems an odd omission that the letter should say nothing at all about how the authors would save the euro zone from a meltdown, in the absence of the bail outs that annoy them so much.

Now, please don't start accusing me of saying that the euro is in good shape, or that Greece should have been allowed to join, or that the bail outs agreed so far are doing anything other than kicking the can down the road and hoping that—by lessening the intensity of the fiscal adjustments needed in countries like Greece—those bail out loans may increase the chances of Greece recovering. I think the euro zone is in terrible shape, and that the next step needed is probably as orderly a default as Greece can manage, given that its national debts are unsustainably huge.

But if you believe, as the 14 MPs do, that bail outs must stop now because they are throwing good money after bad, are you saying that the collapse of the euro zone periphery is inevitable? If you are saying that, and if (as per Point 2) you think the collapse of the euro zone periphery could cost Britain some chunk of €300 billion, then the losses mentioned in Point 1 start to seem a little beside the point, no?

Because Point 3 is certainly not a solution to meltdown in the euro zone. It is a perfectly sensible shopping list of all the liberal measures that Britain has wanted to impose on its European neighbours ever since it joined the EEC, preceded by a false assertion that there is currently a "policy vacuum" in the EU, which a British shopping list might fill.

There isn't a policy vacuum in the EU just now as a result of the euro crisis. There is a vacuum when it comes to attractive scenarios for the euro zone. There is a striking absence of policy ideas that are appealing.

But if you follow the news from Brussels, Frankfurt, Paris, Berlin and so on, you can see there is a positive abundance of policy suggestions out there. These proposals include calls for a European finance minister with powers to oversee national budgets, the launch of eurobonds to allow users of the single currency to pool their borrowing costs, and the rescue of the periphery through a fiscal transfer union accompanied by European taxes and an increase in the EU budget to 20% of GDP (up from 1% now). All those ideas would be anathema to the British government and indeed to me. But that does not mean they do not exist.

What the letter-writers are really saying is that they think that all the ideas in circulation sound stupid and offensive, are doomed to fail and in the process risk costing Britain money. But Point 3 clearly also recognises that some new mechanisms or structures are on the way, at which point Britain will have to give its approval, at which point Britain will have a veto, at which point the MPs think Britain should push for all the things it has always wanted.

But here's the thing. Here is how this risks looking for the other 26 members of the EU. The euro house is burning down (because stupidly it was partly built of straw and lit with candles), and so its 17 owners now want to spend lots of money on a fire engine. Britain (whose banks loaned an alarming chunk of the original money for the construction of the straw house) thinks a fire engine will not change the fact that the euro house is flammable, so is refusing to put any money into the fire engine fund.

But because Britain will have a vote in the group discussion on buying a new fire engine, the 14 MP letter-writers think this would be a brilliant moment to interrupt proceedings and demand that the owners of the straw house join a gym and lose weight, as Britain has so often advised before.

As I said above, don't start accusing me of defending the construction of the current euro zone. But if the proof of the 14 MPs' moderacy is their acceptance that a collapse of the euro zone would be a bad and dangerous thing (as opposed to a source of pure celebration, as it is for some ultras), then they have to explain, surely, what they would do to save it. This letter does not amount to that explanation.