Impress and the New Blackshirts
In a couple of weeks, with a Parliamentary recess for Christmas reducing the risk of awkward questions being asked, the Culture Secretary will decide whether or not to "activate" Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act. Activation will mean that any newspaper that fails to sign up to the privately owned , state approved press regulator "Impress" will have to pay the legal costs of anyone who sues that newspaper for libel, even if the newspaper wins the libel case in court. In other words, the newspaper will automatically lose (in financial terms) every libel case, no matter how undeserving, that is bought against it. The vast majority of British newspapers, national and local, want nothing to do with a state regulator. Impress isn't a body owned by the state, however: the state merely "approves" it. Impress is funded and thereby owned by the Formula One Tycoon Max Mosley, son of Oswald Mosley, the one time leader of the British Union of Fascists, who w...