The politicising of the Coulson scandal is inevitable, but it doesn’t help anyone. It would do a lot for the rehabilitation of politics for the voters to see a few Tories break ranks and acknowledge that, despite the short-cut to the heart of Murdochia that he provides, Andy Coulson’s appointment as Communications Chief was a disastrous error of judgement. And the refusal to remove him is now undermining the Government and the Coalition.

One can understand Mr Cameron’s reluctance to give up having Rebekah Brooks’ old mate in the office next door, but the damage this is doing to the credibility and goodwill which the country is generally prepared to show the new PM must far outweigh the benefits of that proximity.

Naively, in a discussion on BBC Radio Wales yesterday, I suggested that there were Tories who would be delighted to see the back of Couson; I cited John Whittingdale, Tory chairman of the Culture Media Sport Committee, for having been vigorous in his pursuit of truth from the News of the World. When the paper’s management Andy Coulson, Stuart Kuttner (managing editor) and Tom Crone (legal boss) appeared in front of his committee last year they lied so blatantly in their claims that they remembered nothing that committee members and watching journalists were laughing.

Coulson had been asked point blank by Welsh committee member, Adam Price how The News of the World had been able to run a story (by as yet uncharged Neville “Onan the Barbarian” Thurlbeck) entirely based on a message left on Prince Harry’s voicemail by his brother William, which could have been obtained by no other means than illegal voice-mail hacking, without the editor questioning its provenance and the way it was acquired.

            The story was prominent – the whole of page 7 – with a front page “exclusive” banner trail. The crassness of running a story so obviously acquired in this way is mind-boggling, but not as utterly incredible as Coulson’s reply that, as editor at the time, he knew absolutely nothing about it and had no memory of the story. Any reasonable jury would have deemed this evidence enough of Coulson’s complicity with his reporters’ illegal news-gathering. The footage from the committee proceedings was shown to an incredulous nation on Channel 4 news that evening.

The committee even concluded in their report last February that they had encountered a stone-wall of “collective amnesia”. But yesterday, not half an hour after I’d been commending the independent and objective stance of his chairmanship, John Whittingdale was on BBC’s World at One saying that his committee had to accept Coulson’s denial as they had no other evidence, and that there was no further case to answer.

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