Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job

Microsoft’s president said regulator’s decision on Activision Blizzard was ‘the darkest day in our four decades in Britain’. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

The silliest line in Microsoft president Brad Smith’s whine about the UK was his claim that the Competition and Markets Authority is “not only unelected but unaccountable”. That is an absurdly over-the-top reaction to a regulatory thumbs-down in the UK, on entirely coherent grounds, for Microsoft’s planned $68.7bn (£55bn) takeover of the video games firm Activision Blizzard.

What does Smith want? A national poll to choose the directors of the independent body responsible for competition and consumer protection? In practice, one suspects, Smith would expect to see something like the UK’s current system.