George Eustice, seemingly one of the few people who has ever defected from UKIP to the Tories and the PM’s former Press Secretary, has upped his war against the media.  The man who wants the state to regulate/gag hacks now says that journalists should trust politicians more and he’s coming for the broadcasters:

“The truth is that no democracy can work without political parties, making their case, having robust arguments with one another. The current broadcasting rules meant that broadcasters had too much power. That has led to, I think, an over-emphasis on process, on political strategy, rather than actually giving politicians the credit for doing what they do do most of the time, which is to say what it is that they actually believe.”

If politicians didn’t spend so much time committing horrendous process foul-ups, let alone failing to devise any coherent political strategy whatsoever, perhaps the press would not be so scathing. Political parties have their own websites from which to broadcast in unedited form. As Eustice’s own colleague Douglas Carswell put it last night: “The law should be changed to allow political parties to communicate directly with voters? Really?! Try blogging or twitter instead…” If the Tories want more airtime on their own terms then they should deregulate political advertising on TV…