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Former Labour Government Spin Chief turned podcaster, Alistair Campbell, has given his view on why not committing to Leveson 2, as promised, could prove to be a costly mistake for Sir Keir Starmer's Government.

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On the latest episode of The Rest Is Politics Podcast, in discussion with co-host and ex Tory minister Rory Stewart, Campbell responds to a question from a listener (End Populist Lies) , over whether non implementation of Leveson 2 is already producing the kind of media agenda setting that is diverting focus from more important Government priorities.

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Alistair Campbell says: "I think Keir Starmer does have a problem with the way the media, at the moment, does seem absolutely hell bent on taking the smallest thing and whipping it up into the biggest thing."

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The pair question if the press have seized on non-implementation of press reform as a signal of weakness from the Government, and ask what will that mean for the way the public receive political information in our newspapers?

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Alistair Campbell:

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It's proving to be a ‘hideous mistake’ says End Populist Lies by Labour not to implement Leveson 2 as we’ve seen a full Bannon playbook insurrection attempt against the new government, driven by the mainstream media. What can be done to remove the corrupt Tufton Street stranglehold on the world UK media?

Alistair Campbell:

Well I think we know where End Populist Lies is coming from! 

Rory Stewart:

Can I quickly tell people what Leveson was?  Sir Brian Leveson was a judge who started this investigation after journalists at the News of the World hacked the phone of murdered school Millie Dowler and the first part of the inquiry looked at culture practice and ethics the press and the second part was meant to be an investigation into the relationship between journalists and the police, and it was abandoned by Matt Hancock, who was then the Culture Secretary, and there was a lot of hope then that Labour would bring it back, and oddly, (and there is a couple of questions are getting at this this this week,) Labour decided not to do that.

Tell me whether you think implementing Leveson 2 would have made a difference and would have been helpful?

Alistair Campbell:

Well they obviously made the judgement that politically they thought it would be unhelpful because it would make the press very angry running into election and therefore I think Keir Starmer made it clear, without it being a big deal, that Leveson 2 as it were, was going to be dropped and I think a lot of people were pretty angry about that. The question from End Populist Lies well, it wasn’t a question, it was a statement, they called it a hideous mistake I don’t know whether it was hideous but I think there is an element in the politics of this that is a mistake. 

Because once you said to the press, 'well okay we know you got all sorts of terrible stuff, all sorts of corrupt stuff, all sorts of bad stuff and we were very angry about it at the time but we’ve decided because we've got other challenges to face now that we’re not going to bother with it,' I think that sort of gives the green light to the press to do what the press likes to do, which is basically try to build up and destroy. When we talked to Lisa Nandy 'On Leading' she was clear that the landscape has changed so much. That now it’s much more the focus has to be on social media and the impact on young people and all that sort of stuff...

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Rory Stewart:

Podcasts, got to go after podcasts!

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Alistair Campbell:

Exactly!

I don't know whether End Populist Lies thinks that we fall in the category of mainstream media or not? So I do think there was an element of it being a mistake. It falls into the category of it essentially, I don’t think you should be giving out too many signals of weakness I think and I'm afraid the media did take it as a green light to do the sort of stuff they are now doing.

Maybe they would’ve done it anyway, but I definitely reached the point of thinking that the extent of the way that our media culture had changed was doing real damage the country and our reputation and by the way, one of the key figures in the whole Murdoch/Leveson phone hacking stuff was Will Lewis, the guy who at the centre of This Washington post stuff.

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The hosts go on to discuss the effect of the diminishing local newspaper environment and the power of billionaire owners using the media to further their own ends asking, 'Who has More Power Murdoch or Musk?"

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Listen to the podcast here

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