Impossible To Contest

There’s only one Peter Oborne:

The phone hacking affair has displayed the Prime Minister at his worst – a shallow, amoral, conniving careerist, determined to secure high office at any cost.

Nevertheless, in Westminster yesterday, the general opinion seemed to be that David Cameron had got away with it, in the wake of Tuesday’s court verdicts.

Political experts judged that he had answered most of the important questions, and that Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, had scarcely landed a blow.

Many hold the view that this has been an excellent week for the British press.

Yesterday, The Sun newspaper, where Rebekah Brooks was the first female editor, went into full-scale celebration mode. “Great day for red tops” read its front-page headline.

I disagree strongly with both these judgments.

In truth, the past week has been terrible for the press, for politicians and, above all, for the Prime Minister.

Let’s recapitulate the sordid facts.

In the summer of 2007, David Cameron was running scared. He was starting to slip in the polls and was fretting that Gordon Brown might call – and win – a snap general election.

So Mr Cameron hired as his senior aide a well-known Fleet Street figure, the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson.

Mr Coulson was famous for his journalistic brilliance and cool, clear judgment. However, his reputation was under a cloud.

A few months earlier, he had suddenly resigned after his royal correspondent was imprisoned for phone hacking. Mr Cameron accepted Mr Coulson’s assurances that he had done nothing wrong.

But this week, a jury at the Old Bailey found Mr Coulson guilty of conspiracy to hack phones–and his former boss is paying the inevitable price for taking him to Downing Street as his director of communications.

The future Prime Minister was repeatedly warned about the consequences of doing so. I know of one friendly columnist who took him aside and gave him a private warning.

Ian Katz, the deputy editor of The Guardian, gave a private briefing about Mr Coulson to Mr Cameron’s chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn.

In a column in The Observer in April 2010, just before the election, I warned David Cameron that he would be “making an extremely worrying statement about the type of government he plans to lead if he allows Coulson anywhere near Downing Street”.

Essential evidence came from the outstanding Guardian journalist Nick Davies, who has done so much to bring the phone-hacking scandal to light.

Using traditional journalistic techniques, he carried out an investigation that resulted in very troubling revelations.

It portrayed Andy Coulson’s News of the World as essentially a large, private intelligence service, using some of the same highly intrusive techniques as MI5, not all of them legal.

There really was no excuse at all for David Cameron to be unaware of what had been going on.

In yesterday’s Guardian, Mr Davies levelled the very serious additional charge that the Prime Minister misled the Leveson Inquiry about his decision to hire Mr Coulson.

He quotes Mr Cameron telling Robert Jay QC under oath:

“I was reliant on [Coulson’s] word, but I was also reliant on the fact that the Press Complaints Commission had accepted his word, the select committee had accepted his word, the police had accepted his word, the Crown Prosecution Service had accepted his word.”

But as Davies points out, at the stage when Mr Cameron hired Mr Coulson, he had not even been interviewed by the Press Complaints Commission, or by a select committee, let alone by the police.

The Prime Minister then compounded his original mistakes by failing to ensure that his director of communications received the “developed vetting” that is routine in a job as powerful as his.

Many now wonder whether he was afraid that a proper investigation would expose the fact that Mr Coulson had broken the law.

Ed Miliband told MPs yesterday that Mr Cameron “will be the first ever incumbent of his office to bring a criminal into the heart of Downing Street”.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister was skilful enough to escape the political consequences of his delinquency. In the long term, he will be deeply damaged.

Mr Cameron has many virtues, but it is no longer possible to regard him as a man of sound character and reliably decent morality.

It is relevant here to note that his error of judgment over Mr Coulson is not an isolated case.

It is only a few months since he crassly decided to stand by his culture secretary, Maria Miller, even in the face of proof that she had fiddled her expenses.

Three years have now passed since the revelation that the News of the World had hacked into the phone of the murdered Milly Dowler.

It is essential to ask whether British politics has got any cleaner in the meantime.

Tragically, the answer must be no.

The phone hacking scandal exposed a louche, selfish, privileged metropolitan elite at the heart of British public life.

That elite still exists.

Incredibly, the Chipping Norton set, of which the British Prime Minister was such a leading ornament, still flourishes.

Late last year, the Telegraph’s diarist, Tim Walker, revealed (after initial denials) that Mr Cameron and his Chancellor, George Osborne, had attended the 50th birthday celebrations of Matthew Freud, an unappetising public relations mogul who is married to Rupert Murdoch’s daughter, Elisabeth.

Another PR crony of Mr Cameron’s, Alan Parker, was given a knighthood in the Birthday Honours.

It is not just the Prime Minister, and the coterie of chancers who surround him, who carry on as if nothing has changed.

The same is true of Ed Miliband, who last week caused such offence to his supporters by posing with The Sun.

His failure to score points in Parliament yesterday looks like the result of a cowardly reluctance to offend Rupert Murdoch for a second time.

Or consider David Blunkett.

Labour’s former home secretary was one of the most notorious victims of phone hacking, and has spoken movingly of how the intrusion drove him close to a breakdown.

Yet until last year he was happy to accept an annual payment (equal to £3,300 a day) as an adviser to News International on“corporate social responsibility”.

Tessa Jowell’s phone was hacked no fewer than 29 times when she was a Cabinet minister.

She was told this at the time by the police, and it is alleged that she failed to complain (something she disputes).

Ms Jowell is now reportedly planning to seek election as Mayor of London after the retirement of Boris Johnson, and appears content to earn a considerable amount from BSkyB.

We now come to the press.

Rebekah Brooks being cleared of all charges is doubtless a matter of muted celebration, though not as splendid as the news that her husband Charlie, who has conducted himself with such admirable loyalty and good humour, has walked out of court a free man.

I very much hope that he will soon resume his racing column in The Daily Telegraph.

However, three News of the World journalists have already pleaded guilty to phone hacking, while another 23 journalists from an assortment of newspapers are yet to stand trial.

The scandal has been a shameful episode that has revealed the presence of an arrogant political/media class who have been habitually contemptuous of ordinary people.

They are still being called to account.

Let’s leave the final word to Gemma Dowler, sister of Milly. She spoke yesterday of her disgust at the “incestuous relationship between our top politicians and the press”.

She was right to be disgusted.

Very few of us, and certainly not the Prime Minister, have learnt our lesson.