An influential group of mainstream Tories, including four former cabinet ministers, have opened the door to a limited form of statutory press regulation, warning that proposals being put forward by the newspaper industry "risk being an unstable model destined to fail".
The letter, published in the Guardian and signed by 42 MPs and two peers, signals a potential shift in the politics of media regulation because it is the first suggestion that the Conservative party is not going to respond to the Leveson inquiry with a monolithic opposition to legal regulation of the industry. Lord Justice Leveson is due to publish the inquiry's findings at the end of this month and ferocious lobbying of No 10 is under way from both sides in the argument.