You cannot be serious, Piers

Piers Morgan, editor of the Daily Mirror, is what Arnold Bennett would have called a "card". And The Card, at 37, is now facing his greatest test.

His decision to make a dramatic shift in the culture of the Mirror after his political awakening on 11 September was a brave one. It is doubly brave in the context of The Sun's decision to slash its price in London to 10p.

Morgan is trying to revive the paper's glory days under Hugh Cudlipp, in my opinion the outstanding popular journalist produced by Fleet Street of the past century. His journalistic creed was rooted in a simple belief: "have fun, but with integrity". He demanded reporting, featurewriting and sub-editing of the highest quality - albeit often within a tabloid presentation. Cudlipp always led from the front, never afraid to tackle the most complex and difficult subject.

Morgan recently told the British Journalism Review that he had given up "trying to out-Sun The Sunî and brought back to the Daily Mirror some of the characteristics of Cudlipp's paper of 30 and 40 years ago.

He turned his back on what he called "buckets of trashy, racy, celeb-driven scandal sleazeî and concentrated on hard news, authoritative comment, wellwritten features - although not forgetting the old "celeb-driven scandal sleazeî inside the paper. And from April he pulled back the old Daily Mirror title, killed off the red-top design, produced dazzling Cudlipp-style front pages, reintroduced the Cassandra column and called back the paper's former foreign correspondent, John Pilger, who was sacked by Robert Maxwell.

Shortly after this extraordinary makeover, owner Trinity Mirror cut the price, but the policy is a mess. In London and other southern areas - where The Sun is stronger and unlikely to be beaten - the cover price is 20p, compared with the original 32p. Elsewhere, the old price of 32p remains, while in Scotland the Mirror is selling at 10p to counter a huge Murdoch drive to take command in what was very much old Mirror territory.

Now The Sun has reduced its London cover price to 10p and is confident of winning the price war. Some insiders at Trinity Mirror reckon this war is costing at least £500,000 a week and so far has run up more than £6 million out of the Mirror's £20 million

relaunch budget. Of course, the price war also costs News International a lot of cash - but Murdoch's pockets are deeper than Trinity Mirror's.

So is Morgan's brave stand a success? Circulation is slightly lower than it was before his revolution began; but then so too is The Sun's, on a six-month comparison. Yet, in that period, The Sun is down by only 1.7 per cent against The Mirror's three per cent. So Sun editor David Yelland appears to be winning the price war, and there remains a huge overall circulation gap between the papers - June figures put The Sun at 3,441,613 against the Daily Mirror's 2,127,115. That is not good reading for the chiefs at Trinity Mirror plc, whose group profits showed only a slender rise of 1.5 per cent last year.

Morgan seems to want the Mirror to become a kind of Left-of-centre Daily Mail, but is there a market for such a popular daily? I believe there is, but it will require guts, Spitfire-nerve, a lot of cash and a long-haul commitment.

Journalistically Morgan's awardwinning post-11 September coverage was superb. Yet some critics still insist that he is wrong and lacks judgement: that however noble and worthy stories about deprivation, disease and poverty in India or Africa, such stuff will, as the old line has it, butter no parsnips in "the back streets of Derby". Critics will say that Cudlipp would never have done that. They're wrong. He did quite frequently astound convention by producing "Shock Issues" of the Daily Mirror about subjects other papers either ignored or played down - poverty in Britain, the problems of the aged, the environment, housing.

It was, indeed, Cudlipp who first sent John Pilger roving around the world, unearthing stories that his detractors might have dismissed as "worthy". They were stunning productions which may not have added to the Mirror's permanent circulation, but had enormous impact on the day.

MORGAN confesses that he is growing up, and indeed he is. Yet in a recent Spectator interview, there were some extraordinary solecisms. Referring to David Yelland, editor of The Sun, Morgan said: "I hate Yelland and I don't respect him as an editor as he is a toady of Number 10.î (Morgan's hero Cudlipp would never have said that, at least in public, about any Fleet Street rival.) He went on: "Most journalists are morally bankrupt. I make no bones about this.î (Morgan is simply being silly and going against his claim to be growing up.) And the confusion continued with his admission: "I do have more of a conscience now.î The Daily Mirror needs an editor of consistent credibility, and Morgan is still searching for his compass.

The biggest gap in his armoury is that he doesn't have a wise old journalistic owl of significant professional substance: even the redoubtable Cudlipp needed his guru, and had Sydney Jacobson (later Lord Jacobson) as editorial director. Behind both, at least for a time, was the towering figure of Cecil Harmsworth King. But it was Jacobson who, from time to time, put a hand on Hugh's shoulder to whisper a restraining caution.

Morgan badly needs a Jacobson. Neither the former editorial director nor King would have allowed Piers to make "a pratî of himself, to use his own word, by buying shares tipped by his own City Slickers financial staff (which the DTI is still investigating).

The excellent business brains at the top of Trinity Mirror (chairman Sir Victor Blank and his chief executive Philip Graf) are not newspapermen capable of "doing a Jacobson" or a King. And this weakness often shows in Morgan's excitability in relations with the Blair Government.

When Morgan won the Newspaper of the Year award last March, I congratulated him as a deserved winner. He looked at me, a previous critic, and was honest enough to say: "You know, after seven years editing the paper, I think it is only in the last year or so that I understand the special character of the Daily Mirror.î

To be sure, the whole Morgan revolution is a gamble for Trinity Mirror - and a big one in cash terms. The final test must be whether the paper stabilises with a higher circulation. Dramatic improvement in sales figures is improbable. It will be tough going and must finally depend on how long Trinity is prepared to keep its nerve.