We are the only people who can stop Murdoch’s power growing

After the parliamentary inquiries, Leveson, and the criminal trials, it sometimes feels like nothing has changed at Rupert Murdoch’s News UK.

The grim case of Tulisa Contostavlos shows that Murdoch’s people will still fit up a celebrity if it sells papers.

When I read Mazher Mahmood’s Sun on Sunday drugs sting, I thought of poor Sean Hoare.

Sean was a brave man. He was the first former News of the World journalist to have the guts to admit to phone hacking. He was an instrumental figure in the truth coming out. Sean died three years ago last week after battling drug and alcohol addiction most of his adult life. He will not be forgotten.

Sean also told a number of stories relating to cocaine use by Murdoch’s employees, even once claiming that he had photographic evidence of this kind of excess.

I don’t believe the moral ambiguity would bother Mahmood when it came to getting the story. Securing his ‘scoop’ came first- and his victims have paid the price.

Except on this occasion, Tulisa fought back and successfully defended herself in court. Good on her.

The Tulisa trial fiasco must leave a number of people at News UK in despair this week.

The company has rebranded. It has a new corporate social responsibility policy. It had developed new training schemes to get kids for poorer backgrounds into journalism.

Many of the executives who were around in the hacking years have been sacked or encouraged to move on. There’s a new boss, Mike D’Arcy, who appears to have an unblemished corporate record.

Yet the company is back to square one because Murdoch was happy to let Mahmood work for the Sun on Sunday. They gave him a job even after he had previously resigned from the Sunday Times (before being sacked), and released from the News of the World.

So no wonder over 7000 people signed up to the “No to the Sun” campaign during the first 48 hours of the world cup.

I hope you can sign up to. I’m hoping the Liverpool boycott will spread.

Challenging Murdoch’s goons at a local level is important but to really improve media plurality requires political courage at the top.

Now we hear that Rupert Murdoch is going to make another bid to buy the whole of BSkyB. This would give him a huge share of the news sources in this country and pose an even greater threat to our democratic institutions.

As Labour party members, we are the only people who can stop Murdoch accumulating more power and influence.

We need new laws to ensure that only people who are truly “fit and proper” are allowed to own or run our broadcast media. I hope that Harriet Harman has the courage and vision to ensure this is a manifesto pledge.

It’s gone a little quiet on Leveson lately.

If she gives an unequivocal manifesto commitment to implement the Leveson reforms in full – and enshrine this pledge in the manifesto – I’ll be the first to support Harriet Harman’s campaign to be Deputy Prime Minister when Ed wins the election.

There’s a more important reason for all the political parties to implement the Leveson proposal though. All three party leaders promised Milly Dowler’s sister Gemma they would.

That’s a promise I would never break.