Politicians and the press: a dangerous moment?
So there are to be inquiries into phone hacking – but at least one will not start until the police investigation has finished. One source told me that the Met, looking at the masses of evidence that needs to be followed up, have speculated privately that Operation Weeting could take as long as two years.
Anyway, whenever it ends, there will be inquiries into the Met’s orginal handling of the case (going for the royal story convictions and nothing else, sitting on bags of evidence and not looking for more) and into what was going on in the world of newspapers.
David Cameron is, I am told, considering having a look at how self-regulation works in the newspaper world – answer: it doesn’t. Governments have traditionally fought shy of strengthening this because of the power of the press. Will this government really use this moment to force something on newspapers they don’t want? That is not exactly how David Cameron (or Gordon Brown or Tony Blair before him) have conducted their relationship with the big newspaper groups til now.
Channel 4 News LIVE BLOG: MPs debate News of the World ‘hackgate’ allegations
The motion on hacking for debate this afternoon is pretty innocuous – under the relevant standing order you get no choice in the matter. It merely calls on the House to consider a public inquiry into News of the World hacking and into 2006-11 Met Police actions. So the judgement is that it is not worth holding a vote on something so tame. But keep an eye on proceedings … Tom Watson is always worth listening to on this story and other MPs might just choose this moment to talk about approaches from the Met telling them they’ve been subjects of great interest. One MP has been told by the police that their phone was hacked so often that it constituted a sustained campaign of assassination.
Meanwhile, in Murdoch’s empire (which includes former members as well as current members of the family) something like civil war has broken out. Andy Coulson’s head was offered on a platter in a carefully leaked story damaging to him which one News International insider said to me was, no question, leaked to reduce the pressure on Rebekah Brooks. That’s always a dangerous moment.
