Andy Coulson takes centre stage for all the wrong reasons
Dear Andy Coulson,
I have no idea how you’re going to feel as you wake up this morning. The BBC and most newspapers are still running with the allegations of phone-tapping at the News of the World, although David Cameron openly gave you his support yesterday – making your job safe, for now at least. The question now becomes how much damage will this incident do to you and how much damage will this incident do to politics?
This unedifying spectacle follows claims in the Guardian that the tabloid paid £1 million to settle legal cases that threatened to expose the use of illegal methods to get stories. Some celebrities whose mobile phones were allegedly hacked into by investigators hired by the News of the World came forward yesterday to say that they were considering suing the newspaper, but the story itself is nothing new. The Metropolitan Police has already conducted an investigation into phone hacking by journalists at the News of the World that resulted in the paper’s royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glen Mulcaire being jailed for four and six months respectively in January 2007 and also led to your resignation as editor. Yesterday, Met Assistant Commissioner John Yates said Scotland Yard would not reopen its files on the case because no new evidence had come to light. That said, three inquiries have been launched by the director of public prosecutions, the Press Complaints Commission and a Commons select committee. During the original Goodman trial, it emerged Mulcaire had hacked into the phones of model Elle Macpherson, publicist Max Clifford, Simon Hughes MP and the Professional Footballers’ Association’s Gordon Taylor, but the Guardian now claims they were among “two or three thousand” public figures targeted by the hacking operation. The new details obtained by the Guardian allegedly emerged during a court case last year involving Mr Taylor and the News of the World after he sued News Group – which owns the News of the World - on the basis that its senior executives must have known about an alleged phone hack on his mobile. He received £700,000 in damages and court costs last year, but on condition that details of the case were not made public.
Naturally, the lack of any new evidence against you didn’t stop Lefty bloggers trying to fuel the fires of ‘You see, the Tories are just as bad as us’ (with Sunny Hundal and Bob Piper flying this particular flag) nor did it stop the Guardian trying to drag your name into the mire at every opportunity. For thousands of phones to be tapped on your watch without your knowledge would be truly incredible but, leaving aside the ‘who knew what and when’ debate that I suspect will never truly be answered (even if you were dragged into a new court case), my first and indeed enduring reaction to this story was one of utter dismay. The world of politics took a hammering over ‘Smeargate’ because it exposed the rotten core of the British Government. While the Labour Party unsurprisingly suffered the worst fallout from Smeargate, it left a very bitter taste in the mouth for everyone who heard about it. More than anything else, it highlighted the shocking degree of cynical, immoral and vicious behaviour that is being shown by some incredibly senior and powerful individuals in Westminster politics. Yesterday reminded us all that Damien McBride was not the only shadowy character walking the hallowed halls in Parliament. As the editor of a major newspaper, you’re not paid to be nice, friendly and ‘above board’ and neither, dare I say, are you expected to be. To suggest that you are the only newspaper editor who may have overstepped the mark by some considerable distance would be laughable, yet I am still totally unable to take any comfort from the presence of people like you within politics. Even though I honestly don’t know how much you knew about the phone tapping and thus have no reason to attack or defend you, I’m sure that this will raise a few swing voters’ eyebrows and make them wonder whether the Conservatives really deserve the moral high ground when it comes to honesty and integrity.
I know that politics has to a worrying degree become a cold, heartless media-driven slanging match, which makes people like you almost indispensable given your expertise in managing stories. Even so, the very fact that people like you are in demand and worth £485,000 a year to the Conservative Party says to me loud and clear that politics has lost its way. This isn’t the way it is supposed to be and this certainly isn’t what the public voted for. I’m not stupid enough to think that politics was ever whiter than white, but the day that people like you are out of a job will be the day that politics puts itself back on the long, long road to redemption.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
“…the very fact that people like you are in demand and worth £485,000 a year to the Conservative Party says to me loud and clear that politics has lost its way. “
And a hearty ‘Amen’ from me!
You’d have thought Cameron might have learned from the Blair/Campbell days that it isn’t generally a good idea for a leading politician to employ the former editor of a tabloid scandal sheet as your media man.
The fact that he didn’t speaks volumes about Cameron.
Dear LFAT
“….although David Cameron openly gave you his support yesterday – making your job safe, for now at least.”
When the Club Chairman gives his full support to the manager, does not the manager start job hunting?
You make the point:
“As the editor of a major newspaper, you’re not paid to be nice, friendly and ‘above board’ and neither, dare I say, are you expected to be.”
Murdoch and Cap’n Bob between them put paid to the last vestiges of editorial responsibility in political coverage and both got increased revenue by printing scandal about public figures and daring the individual involved to sue. The public get the Media they deserve, and men like Coulson and Campbell are merely the products of their times.
These people, and others like them are the cattle egrets of the political big beasts they serve – living off the ticks on the hide that they remove and the Coulsons and Campbells of this world will continue to prosper while there are ticks breeding in the media swamp.m surprised you take much notice of the Labour driod Piper or the “progressive” Liberal (soft Fascist) Sunny. both are notable only by the fact that comments which are considered “unhelpful” are never posted or replied to with ad hom attacks.
“…the very fact that people like you are in demand and worth £485,000 a year to the Conservative Party says to me loud and clear that politics has lost its way.“
I repeat this because it should act as a siren call. You have touched the nerve endings of the Tory Party. Well done! What we really need is for the heart and soul of that party to be given a jolly good massage!
Thanks Julia and Arden.
Stan, I don’t like it any more than you do but does Cameron really have a choice? When he is competing with the enormous media machine that is the British government along with their thousands of press officers (literally), what chance does he have unless he plays at their game? Look at how poor the Lib Dems are at media engagement without someone like Coulson.
GOH, the public do indeed get the media that satisfies their particular cravings – I just think it’s appalling that there aren’t strong privacy laws that inflict considerable pain on any newspaper that gets involved in these sorts of activities.
The problem I have with this story (and have been hanging out in Washington for a few days watching the Sarah Palin story so may have missed some details) is that is simply an unedifying witchhunt.
If I have got the details right, Coulson did something wrong (or didn’t know something was going on) in his last job. He resigned. Why isn’t that the end of the story? Justice has been done.
This underlines a more fundamental shift in media/public culture which is deeply disturbing. It seems that the concept of an offender having ‘paid their debt to society’ has gone out of the window and there is a
nasty, vindictive streak coming to the fore.
LFAT. I agree with your sentiments entirely. I’m just pointing out that unless/until the mores of society change, the Genie is out of the bottle and cannot be replaced.
On the subject of strong privacy laws, surely one mans’ protection is another man’s censorship? How would you deal with the defence that despite all reasonable care being taken by the newspaper involved, a reporter was breaking the law? It is, after all, not unknown for information to be obtained by illegal means to direct an investigation so that the same information is obtained by legal means.
Would the UK’s privacy laws be enforceable outside the UK? If an article about a UK public figure appears in a foreign source and then published in a UK paper, is that still covered by UK privacy laws? How would you word the laws you envisage?
@Charles –
Charles. Good point that highlights Labour’s increasingly desperate attempts to deny the inevitable
[...] a bit tied up at the moment doing other things but I had a look at Letters from a Tory. This is an excellent letter to a certain Mr. Andy Coulson. I encourage as many to read [...]
Charles, this was clearly a political campaign mounted by the Guardian to dig up old news – there has never been any evidence of wrongdoing by Coulson but the Guardian wants you to believe that there has been.
GOH, it is only the UK press that can ever be controlled but they are 100% responsible for everything that they publish and should be treated as such. No information about anyone’s private life should be able to be legally published, save for information about elected representatives who behave in such a way that brings the position into disrepute. Rogue journalism is not an excuse for invading someone’s privacy – editors and newspaper/magazine owners must be held liable for every word in their publications.
Have you read Flat earth News LFAT? Its all in there.
I wasn’t as surprised by that book as i thought I would be.
Journalists hire bin men/PI to go through the waste. Journos contact friends with a false story to get a phone number etc.
What I didn’t realise was that separate black ops taskforces,fronted by deniable cutouts, like recently fired or resigned editors . Very WW2. Very McBride and I suppose very Coulson.
The problem for Cameron is how to proceed from here. If he allows the Guardian its scalp for today, they will just be back for another one, and another from here to May 2010.
The Labour party are now beyond conscience in the way that they will employ any smear to stay in power. Mastery of the media has been their only strength over the last ten years, they cannot lose it and retain power. Remember how, in the run up to 1997, employed the services of such degenerates as Max Clifford, but when they were involved in sexual scandals it was a ‘private matter’, or privacy laws were called for. Their ability to manipulate the agenda for their own means is their primary skill. (It certainly isn’t fiscal policy and good governance, whatever they might have us believe).
So Cameron must support Coulson, however bad the allegations unless they can substantiated. The police do not want to pursue this, there is no proof that any phone tapping has gone on beyond that which has been charged and convicted. The DPP, (a political appointee in all but name), could reopen the case, but it would chunter on with no hope of evidence, which is of course Labour’s hope, a running sore.
It’s time to fight back, and fight dirty with Coulson’s help if necessary. After the election, then Conservatives can govern in a clean and decent way, but until then we must play the game by the rules that the governing party has set until we are in a position to set the rules ourselves.
@ Tony. Since the wheels started to come off the 1000 year Socialist Utopia about 3 years ago, Labour has been pulling every trick in the book to convince the Electorate that, “they are as bad as we are”. The Tories should be doing their utmost to avoid giving their opponents legitimate cause to substantiate this claim. DC has the high ground (just) on expenses. he must now attempt to claim the high ground on smears. I hope the brains of the party can fight clever rather than dirty, and that Coulsons’ brief is to use his poacher’s talents as gamekeeper.
Good post LFAT. Coulson’s presence in the upper echelons of the Tory party is indeed symptomatic of the malaise our politics finds itself in.
I hope he does go soon but the sad thing is he will probably just be replaced with someone else well versed in the “dark arts”. Twas ever thus.
If he did it, he needs to be picked up for it.
“…the very fact that people like you are in demand and worth £485,000 a year to the Conservative Party says to me loud and clear that politics has lost its way.“
Hmm. A spin doctor who ATTRACTS dirt to his own side… Does anyone else out there think that maybe Miste Cameron bought his press manager in the same dodgy knockoff shop that the MOD got its new – and lethal to their passengers -APCs?
Although I’d consider myself a Tory (probably closer to Libertarian, but who cares….) I’d be surprised if any fellow Tories are surprised by our hiring of a murky Spin Doctor.
Labour have damaged the administration of every-day political workings with their manipulation and spin, a result of which, Dave feels unable to function in modern day politics without similarly indulging in the “dark-arts”. Disappointing.
More on point, if there is nothing in terms of new evidence and new revelations to add to a story which resulted in Coulson resigning and a couple of hacks getting the “gaol”, then who really cares? Is this revenge from the Left following McBride-gate? Next we’ll be hearing that Elvis died and that Nick Griffin holds some questionable opinions….
“Stan, I don’t like it any more than you do but does Cameron really have a choice?”
Of course he has a choice. Even if you accept that a modern political party needs a media manager why does it have to be someone from the gutter press?
I think that employing someone who has made their mark by appeailing to the lowest common denominator is not particularly good for our political scene. If you like politics to be all emotion and show rather than substance and policy – then it’s ideal. But I happen to think that we desreve better than that.