Who runs Britain?

A significant shift in the phone hacking story took place on Saturday. A lawyer working for several as yet unnamed celebs stated categorically that it was not just the News of the World engaged in nefarious deeds. Gee Whizz!

No-one still breathing can be surprised that in the tabloid/Mail race to the gutter, the sewer and the cess pit, corners were cut, palms were greased and crimes were committed. 

This theme was continued in the Guardian today, in an article by Jackie Ashley.

"If you think all this stopped some time ago, you have to be bloody joking." She ...(a celeb) was told only last month that there had been yet another attempt to hack into her voice messages. The practice is endemic. Shrewd editors have passed the really dirty stuff "offshore" – to self-employed dirt diggers – but they are happy to buy and publish the results. The list of targets is apparently much wider than the investigations so far have shown, and is unlikely to be kept under wraps for much longer.”

“Here's the problem. Normally, when something goes wrong we would expect it to be uncovered by the media, or MPs or the police. In this case, so many newspapers are implicated that it's naive to expect proper investigation of the story, still less demands for a change in the law. Much of the focus on Coulson was driven by editors who simply wanted the phone-hacking scandal to disappear, and hoped that his scalp would end any further scrutiny. That now seems unlikely.”

“What about MPs? Where is the chorus of outrage from Westminster, where so many members have been targeted? You might expect this to be a huge issue in the Commons, not least because it might be seen as just retribution and revenge for journalists' exposure of MPs' expenses.”

“There are MPs campaigning on this. But the silence from the party leaderships, where the power lies, has been deafening. And the reason is bleakly clear. Look at the reports and see the photos from any of Murdoch's summer parties, where the political class and the News International elite schmooze. There is no crude political favouritism here. At the Orangery in Kensington or the Oxo tower, you find Cameron, Lord Mandelson, Alastair Campbell, both Miliband brothers, Ken Livingstone, Nick Clegg, George Osborne – etc, etc – mingling with the News International chief, his family and his courtiers.” Guardian 24/1/2011

The Independent today relates how James Murdoch, apprentice Master of the Universe, had dinner with the Camerons in the company of Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International, just a few days after he took Cable off the case. The line from No.10 rather pathetically was that Brooks was a constituent of Cameron’s in Witney. 

“We need a thorough-going clean up of the rules by which individuals can be spied on and harassed. But who can we turn to? There have been dark mutterings of police collusion and apathy. They have certainly not rushed to inform those who have been targeted. Many politicians feel intimidated, fearful of what the press might do to them if they do raise concerns. I have spoken to several MPs who are suspicious about the way cameras appeared as if by chance – but they will only talk off the record.”

“The answer is that MPs of all parties have to understand this is just as much a question of authority, of "who runs Britain?", as Europe or the dominance of the bankers. We get steamed up about CCTV cameras and the big state, and rightly so. But what about privately sponsored snooping and the Big Hack? If the legislature is intimidated by newspapers, it is not worthy of respect and cannot be relied on to protect anyone else. We seem to be living through a digital age of exposure, much of it driven by the press. Now, perhaps, it's time to shine the light on the one profession that has too often been able to work quietly, in the shadows, without full disclosure or scrutiny – journalism.” (ibid)

It is unlikely that the political class will sort this out without a great deal of external pressure. They have too cosy a relationship with the media barons to take them on. 

It is time to put the Met Police under scrutiny too. Let us have an Inquiry of the most rigorous and searching kind - with participants speaking on oath about their links with News International (and the rest).

It matters.