In his article, Oborne suggests that Blair and New Labour reinterpreted the British political tradition as a private conversation among elite groups, of which the most important in Blair’s eyes was Rupert Murdoch’s corporate empire. In that he is not wrong. Yet, says Oborne:

It is this system of government that has been exposed in all of its barbarism and moral horror over the past few weeks. As the Westminster season mercifully draws towards a close, it is extremely important to ponder what comes next – for I am certain that there is a wonderful opportunity here to embark upon a new political era, and a new way of doing things.

Sadly, this fantasy is unlikely to become reality in the foreseeable future. No such real exposure has been given to the ‘private conversations among elite groups’ which Oborne describes in his piece, because the re-emergence of phone hacking was primarily a means by the liberal media to stop News Corp’s BSkyB bid.

While the exposure of Murdoch’s corporate meetings with George Osborne and David Cameron have again exposed Cameron as politically inept (if we needed any further proof), it has not drawn a line under similar meetings occurring in future.

Peter Hitchens used a chapter in his book The Broken Compass (recently re-released as The Cameron Delusion) to describe the relationship between journalist and politician, which is at times very close indeed – and this will always be so. But, as Mr Hitchens more recently described, the relationship between the press and politicians should be identical to that between a dog and a lamp post. The problem arises when, as has recently been more apparent, the press and politicians are of one mind.

This threat has arisen from the narrowing proximity between British politicians and the media. They share places of work and residence; they have the same friends; they meet, relax and enjoy similar establishments; they come to know one another intimately. Thus, the old distinctions between Fleet Street and Westminster have fallen. The media and political class have increasingly merged to form a single elite – liberal in nature, absorbed by their own theatre and largely uninterested in politics as the implementation of policy. Adam Smith observed similar in The Wealth of Nations:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.

The same is as true of our political and media establishment as it was of business and trade in 1776. The cosier the relationship between politician and media, the greater the threat to our democracy, the electorate and the public purse.

How one goes about preventing such convergence though is another matter. It is often so easy to identify the problem; not so simple to find a solution. But when Peter Oborne claims we have a wonderful opportunity to embark on a new political era, then at the moment he is wrong – we do not, or at least not yet. The exposé of Cameron’s close links with News Corporation are not entirely surprising and, on their own, do not create the conditions for the ‘new political era’ which Oborne desires.

In a sense, very little has changed. The sorry relationship with Murdoch, established by Blair and continued by Cameron, may be under the spotlight, but it is not unique and will endure in other forms. The only way to facilitate a genuine transformation of the British political scene and re-establish the truly adversarial nature of ‘dog and lamp post’ is to strengthen Parliament and the hand of the electorate.

The decline of our democracy into state managerialism, bureaucracy and EU dictation has gone hand in hand with the slackening in adversity between media and politician. If we are to reverse the trend then we could do little better than start by breaking the connection between state and media.

The stranglehold grip the BBC and its civil partner, the Guardian, enjoy over the media establishment through uncompetitive funding (by the license fee and public sector job advertisements respectively) create problems for increased plurality in the media marketplace. This has, to some extent, been alleviated by the blogosphere – but the fact still remains that the market is heavily distorted.

Furthermore, we cannot ignore the fact that many of the ‘private conversations among elite groups’ occur at the supranational level of the European Union. As the sovereign power of our Westminster Parliament has been willingly transferred to the apparatus of the European Union in Brussels, the House of Commons and thus MPs have declined in importance. They no longer legislate and debate, but instead rubber stamp directives and diktats from our new masters, leaving them with ample time to concentrate on the unimportant and banal.

Even if we were somehow or other able to regain our national sovereignty, the concerns over the calibre of MPs and political parties would remain. It is only by strengthening the link between the electorate and their ability to select and vote for candidates that would result in a better, more representative Parliamentarian. But then, we have rehearsed these arguments and many others countless times before.

The above reforms will not magically occur overnight or, indeed, in the course of one manufactured phone hacking scandal as Oborne may suggest, but sadly over years of sustained pressure and hard work. Of course, the age old problem is how one goes about achieving all of the above without being in power. In all honesty, I do not believe we can achieve much until one of the established political parties collapses – mostly likely the Tories. For such a seismic political event, the conditions must be just right – and that time is not yet. But it will come… or there really is no hope.

Even so, I’ve managed to keep a few tabs on the news (if you could really call it that) in the evenings via Sky News in my hotel room (it was a choice between that, CNN and a selection of rather dubious foreign comedy channels).

Amusingly, I also caught a late night news round-up on the BBC World Service with Richard North as a panellist. Amazing really; you go abroad to get away from the work, the blogs, Richard North et all, and yet the man still manages to find a way through!

No doubt parts of our beloved national media are being overcome with similar feelings. As much as the press try to ignore the current economic realities, they just keep cropping back up to divert their attention from the vital task of endlessly discussing themselves.

Just before my return, it seemed that, all of a sudden, the broadcast and newspaper media had finally woken up to the fact that, yes, the hacking affair was not perhaps the most important item of news on the current, reality-based agenda. The Euro zone economies are collapsing under a mountain of self-inflicted debt, and there is a very real possibility that this could destroy the single currency.

This collapse has been on the cards for some time now, and yet if you listen to large sections of the media then it would appear that they have only recently uncovered this crisis, such is the wide-eyed wonderment with which it is breathlessly reported.

It strikes me that the treatment of the financial crisis by the media is in many ways similar to the famine in Somalia. It wasn’t until this week when the United Nations publically declared that there was a famine in Somalia that the media suddenly took interest. Before the announcement, it was if the famine had not existed, such was the miniscule level of reporting. Similarly, now that the European Union, in the form of our dear leader, José Manuel Barroso, has spoken of the severity of the European economic situation then suddenly, guess what, it’s a crisis! Who would have thought it..?

It seems, in the collective eyes of the media establishment, that for something to exist or become fact then it must be acknowledged by the U.N. or receive other supposedly ‘expert’ approval. And it’s not just any old ‘expert’ that will do either, but ones carefully selected from ‘accepted’ groups and organisations who have a monopoly on officially and legitimately being allowed to care about suffering, starvation or our old favourite, climate change. If anyone outside of the bubble expresses an opinion, however valid or important, then nothing is done. It is ignored, until suddenly, an oik at the BBC or Guardian decides that, you know what, the European economies might actually be on the verge of hitting the fan because José told us so. Only then, apparently, is it worthy of being ‘news’…

It was never my newspaper of choice, being rather light on actual news and rather heavy on the kind of moronic celebrity gossip designed to keep the plebs occupied rather than focused on anything meaningful or important.

Yet, it is highly unlikely that The News of the World will disappear all together, with News International PLC almost certainly planning to re-launch the paper under a different brand. Furthermore, the same journalists working at The News of the World will simply transfer across to the new paper or indeed another paper – so nothing much or substantial will have changed in that regard beyond the image.

However, the fate of The News of the World is not actually the really important matter, but instead the manner of its downfall and what was subsequently brought to light (and I am not referring to the alleged phone hacking – which is rather unimportant and a matter for the police and the courts).

The so-called phone hacking scandal is firstly an absolutely classic example of Westminster-village journalism, and illustrates just how the news corporations make the news and set the public agenda to the exclusion of much more important stories and events outside of the political classes’ bubble. As Richard North observed, did our MPs ever demand an emergency debate over the banking crisis, or more recently the Euro zone and debt crisis in Greece, as they have over phone hacking? The answer is, of course, er, no…

Predictably, the Labour Party (full of brain-dead morons like Chris Bryant) have obsessively attacked the Murdoch paper over phone-hacking, in part as revenge for the paper’s favouring of the Tories at the General Election, and in part because it directly affected them – nothing vexes the political class more than an attack on their own bank balances, privacy or privileges. But when they spy on us, force us to carry ever more draconian forms of identity, tax us into oblivion and destroy our lives, economy and society, then that’s absolutely fine – no problems. End of. Anyway, more importantly, as Autonomous Mind notes:

The phone hacking scandal, while criminal and disgusting, is nothing more than a rider for a campaign where something far greater is at stake – maintaining the left-liberal media consensus that holds sway in this country…

Unsurprisingly, the efforts of the BBC and the Guardian in exposing News of the World misdoings coincide handily with the decision-making process of the Culture Secretary on whether to allow News Corp to buy the sixty one per cent of shares in BSkyB that it does not already own. Thus, the real agenda is not focused on phone hacking but the potential future make up of the broadcast news.

While I do not share Autonomous Mind’s view that Rupert Murdoch is especially conservative or has intentions in that direction with his pursuit of the BSkyB deal, then I think he’s spot on to highlight the widespread coverage of the issue as being induced by the liberal-left media’s fear of competition for control of the airwaves and digital arena. The argument goes that if the image of News Corp and its entities can be sufficiently tarnished, then the Culture Secretary may come under significant political pressure to snub the takeover, thus safeguarding the liberal broadcast monopoly.

Only then does it become clear as to why the media have expended so much time and effort into bringing the phone hacking to the fore. Vested interests and bread and circuses once again rear their head.

Despite a valiant rejection of the Lisbon Treaty by the Irish last year in the face of overwhelming opposition from their entire political class, the media and big business, the nation that once sought independence from British rule has been bullied into accepting rule from distant Brussels.

Only Poland and the Czech Republic have yet to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, and it will likely not be long before they do. As the Czech President Vaclav Klaus sadly noted to waiting journalists:

The Irish had the last chance to say something about Lisbon… because after today’s Irish referendum there will never be another referendum in Europe.

And slowly but surely, as day turns to night, the EU’s slow motion coup d’état takes effect. Our sovereignty has been strangled, our independence dissolved. Squandered are centuries of hard won liberties, rights and freedoms – so often without our knowledge or even a care. It is, as Hugh Gaitskell so accurately predicted, to be the end of a thousand years of history.

Yet, there is hope. We, as a nation, are still capable of saving ourselves from the jaws of defeat as we have so many times before. Perhaps it will be that resilience of character and spirit that sees us through again – but only if we will it to be so. For there will be no-one else behind us to catch us should we falter or fall; no foreign intervention to rescue us from our fate.

That decision is up to us now. Either we wake from our delusions of a benevolent European Union, realise that our future as a truly democratic nation lies in grave danger, and resolve to act – or we slowly subside into bureaucracy, and foreign rule by an unelected state, a fate for which we will only have ourselves to blame.

His visit to Germany and much lauded speech in Berlin (in which unsurprisingly he said nothing at all) were met with screaming crowds of zealous fans whose presence did little more than confirm his full transition from man to unthinking cult.

In many ways Obama reminds me very much of Tony Blair when he first became Prime Minister, who arrived in Downing Street to crowds of screaming fans waving Union Flags on a manifesto of ‘hope’, ‘change’ and ‘optimism’. What those words actually meant, nobody was really sure – but it wasn’t long before Blair and his Labour mob had set to work destroying what was left of Britain, and for his once fanatical supporters to slowly drift away.

Similarly praise for Obama has been equally misplaced. Thus far he has cruised along on a wave of meaningless rhetoric and lavish praise from (in this country) the BBC and the types who were so fond of Tony Blair’s comparable variety of emptiness and slogans in the 90s. In the Mail on Sunday, Peter Hitchens asks:

When will Mr Obama’s absurd bubble of adulation burst?

Unfortunately, one has to suspect that the artificial bubble that has enveloped Obama will be sustained by blogs and the media, both in this country and in America, until the Presidential election in November. However, we can, I feel, do the United States and British politics a great service by simply ignoring him altogether.

By continually mentioning his name and his exploits we will only perpetuate or indeed enlarge his bubble of adulation. Deprived of the oxygen of hype and publicity, hopefully the Obama cult may die out and people will, like they did with Blair, eventually begin to see that behind the grand words and spirited speeches there is just a man – not a saviour – with nothing to say at all.

It is also a rare occasion when I will not in some way directly involve mention of the European Union (oh no, I did it again!) or what I would deem similarly serious political matters or events.

So, as it happens, I noticed that a few of the self obsessed egos who involved themselves in 18 Vanity Street (which amusingly collapsed last year) but chose not to move sideways onto Stephan Shakespeare’s PoliticsHome project have reappeared in the team behind a new magazine called TotalPolitics.

Rather unsurprisingly the TotalPolitics magazine (much like its staff) will really only be interested in the soap opera of the Westminster Village rather than anything that could be even considered vaguely serious. I am not the only one of this opinion.

Yet, despite the magazine being funded in part by Lord Ashcroft and released to much fan fare on some few blogs, I think it may now well be a good time to place your bets on how long it will be before it goes the way of Doughty Street down the pan.

Since TotalPolitics will be sent free of charge to all politicians from our irrelevant MPs down to local district level and also many journalists, this seems to cancel out most of the people who may have actually bothered to buy it in the first place (another reason I think that this is no more than yet another ego trip for its producers and editors.) I mean really, would anyone actually want to pay to read yet more Westminster gossip – especially when (if you so chose) you can read it on the net for free?

Still, until the time that TotalPolitics completely collapses and disappears off the radar, I thought I would take the opportunity to participate in their Top 100 UK Political Blogs. You have to rate your top ten, so here below are mine:

1. EU Referendum
2. Peter Hitchens
3. Sam Tarran
4. Daniel Hannan
5. Archbishop Cranmer
6. ConservativeHome
7. Burning Our Money
8. The Huntsman
9. England Expects
10. Bruno Waterfield

I suspect however that we can all probably guess who will make the top of the final published list – Iain Dale, Paul Staines, Phil Hendren etc. the usual group of self promoting friends who enjoy nothing more than engaging in meaningless tittle-tattle and largely irrelevant gossip.

Much like the red top newspapers these blogs tend to have the most readers (and therefore will accumulate the most votes,) not because they are actually any good in my opinion, but simply because they have become a well established set (due to the fact that they continually promote one another) and that, bar one or two, they publish the sort of Westminster village crap that those in the Westminster village like reading.

In 2006 I managed to make 51st on APCO Wordwide’s list of Top Conservative Blogs – but I have a sneaking suspicion that I won’t be on there this time around. Also I challenge those on the list above to come up with their top ten blogs – not that they will of course but I thought I would just mention it anyway.