Best News In The World Ever...

...Cameron has called for a phone hacking probe.

Well thank fuck for that! Jesus, I'll sleep better tonight, knowing that there is a phone hacking probe to come! This is on a par with the Declaration of Indepedence. Thank Christ for that brave, bold politician named David Cameron.

More seriously, though, I can't remember when the coalition ran out of steam, but I think it was quite early on. But whenever it happened, the coalition has now become largely reactive. It does not offer bold, new policies designed to better the lives of the people in this country. Nor does it offer a genuinely new politics that might allow power to be returned to the people of this country. Rather, it offers a bland and facile reactive approach to politics, where responding to media narratives is far more important than doing anything big, ideological and genuinely radical. Therefore, when there was a chance to create positive headlines or, at the very least, offset some of the more negative ones, Cameron lept at that chance. Just as he has done with, say, his coalition's healthcare reforms.

Government needs to be more than a response to the 24/7 media cycle. It needs to be more than about responding to particular new stories. It needs to be visionary, and it needs to be confident. It needs to be able to say "I don't care about the phone hacking scandal because (a) it is being investigated by the police anyway and (b) I am trying to transform this country for the better". Unfortunately, our current government seem terminally unable to cope with the relative bravery that such a position might entail.

So thank fuck for Cameron's commitment to a phone hacking probe. Because that really is the biggest challenge facing us at the moment in this country. And it is precisely what he should be doing. In the world of Cameron, anyway...