Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy is spending her Conference putting together a manifesto for censorial press regulation to help the Labour Party. The longtime socialist MP made clear at a panel this afternoon that press control would help Keir now that he’s enjoying a touch of press scrutiny:

“It’s in the Labour Party’s interest and in the Labour movement’s long-term interest to regulate the media properly instead of making short-term pacts and truces, and if it’s done right media reform could actually make Keir Starmer’s job a lot easier, and effective media reforms would make effective government much easier.“

Ribeiro-Addy says the crucial “soft-signal” of top-level interest in press regulation was the Labour frontbench’s support for the so-far unenforced Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013. That provision, known as the “press killer,” would force publishers to pay legal costs in defamation and privacy cases for both sides. The Tories killed it before leaving government this year – speculation abounds that it could return in some form under supportive Labour…

The MP’s other bright panel proposals include:

• Imposing state regulation on newspapers to ensure they aren’t “marking their own homework.“
• “Safeguard the independence of the BBC by removing the threat of charter renewal.” So the state broadcaster avoids any and all unaccountability on a permanent basis…
• Impose Leveson 2. With measures that go even further than Section 40…
• Subsidise “independent journalism” with a tax on “evil tech giants.“
• Another tax on “the wealthy owners of these companies so they can’t throw their weight around and torpedo effective progressive policy measures.“

Bell stops short of suggesting the foundation of a state-run newspaper. Doubtless her proposals’ happy destruction of the free press would necessitate one…