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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“This is what we do, we go out and destroy other people’s lives,” was how former News of the World news editor, Greg Miskiw once characterised the ethos of his paper. As a strap-line for the cover of my book, News of the world? Fake Sheikhs & Royal Trappings, it was irresistible in its pithy summary of the editorial priorities of Britain’s biggest selling Sunday paper. And this fact in itself is one of the most depressing comments on the sleazy, voyeuristic tastes of a significant section of the British public and their appetite for salacious personal and sexual details of figures in the public eye – sportspersons, politicians, royals and entertainers. Whether these details are real or made up makes no difference.  

      This appetite exists partly because it is regularly, cheaply and easily satisfied by papers like the News of the World and the Daily Mail, who campaign vigorously with self-righteous and spurious claims for the inalienable right of the British public to know such things.

       But the naked truth of Miskiw’s statement is clearly demonstrated in last Sunday’s Observer, where Polly Vernon, despite her own breathy tabloid delivery, offers the reality of French fashion model, Vanessa Perroncel’s treatment earlier this year by a pack of baying shag-hounds scenting a vulnerable prey.

      It is outside the comprehension of the average tabloid journalist that a man – especially a footballer – could be alone with an attractive woman for any length of time without her underwear coming off. Thus, for them there was no question that when Vanessa was visited by John Terry (former England footer skipper, and best friend of Wayne Bridge, her former long-term boyfriend and father of her son) there was no question that sex had been had. The Screws hack, Guy Basnett decided to embellish this fallacious if fairly pedestrian story with claims of subsequent pregnancy, abortion and a £20,000 pay-off.

And with no interest in what these entirely unfactual claims would do to the parties involved, the story was splashed across the front and several pages of the paper and succeeded in inflicting profound damage on Ms Perroncel, on John Terry, his wife and their marriage, and potentially on Jaydon, Vanessa’s son by Wayne Bridge.

While the rubbish press all speculated vigorously on how much Max Clifford would acquire for her for a major Shag’n’Brag piece, she kept dignified and quiet. She didn’t want Max to sell her side of the story but he  couldn’t do much to stop the Screws running their version either, as he was at that point suing them himself (and won £1m for having his phone hacked by them.)

Vanessa since then has consistently denied that there was any truth in the story, while she was preoccupied with coming out of a six year relationship with Bridge and sorting out parental arrangements for their child.

But there was no let up in the papers’ blood-letting. Vanessa was consistently portrayed as a scheming, self-interested harlot and, on the web, the bone-headed, ignoramus that is Jo British Public laid into her viciously with their own nasty comments and misconceptions.

This witch-hunt by a section of the British public of an entirely innocent woman, also a foreign visitor to Britain, was hugely distressing to her and seeing the apparently unmonitored online comments frequently left her weeping in bewilderment.

But that’s what the News of the World is best at – destroying other people’s lives, to the extent of several suicides over the last thirty years.

Now Vanessa Perroncel is seeking redress, on behalf of herself, her son and, indirectly, the thousands of others who have been callously damaged by the paper’s lies or gratuitous invasion of privacy.

This evil old harridan of a rag has for years consistently broken laws with the full connivance of its management and must by now be a serious embarrassment to its proprietor, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. But, as I have strongly urged in my book and in this blog over the last few years, it is clear that a statutory Law of Privacy must be created, to clarify for newspapers exactly how far they can go, and the criteria by which revelations of an individual’s private life can be deemed in the public interest.

Now, at last, blindingly obvious as this is, politicians (and even some members of the press, if not the Mail or the Screws) are beginning to see the logic and necessity of such legislation.

May they not this time be deterred from curbing the excesses of the red-top hacks by intensive lobbying and covert threats, as the last government was when they tried to introduce custodial sentences for journalists breaching the Data Protection Act. It had to leave the clause strangled and dangling uselessly to avert the wrath of Ken High and Wapping.

In the meantime, it is to be hoped that the British courts will give the News of the World the serious kicking it deserves for its nasty, callous attempt to destroy yet another life, and that Ms Perroncel’s dignity and innocence are vindicated.

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It’s a a great pity that we must be reminded of our Prime  Minister’s connection with Rupert Rumplechops through his choice of the Wall Street Journal (The Jewel in the coronet of Rupert’s vanity) in which to write his well-judegd words about the realities of the “Special Relationship”. Of course, DC’s in-house spinner, Andy Coulson is a former partner in crime with WSJ CEO, Les Hinton. How long will he remain to taint the air in Downing Street? The countdown has started.

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 After the News of the World phone-hacking scandal climaxed at the Old Bailey in January 2007, two scapegoats – Screws reporter, Clive Goodman and Private Investigator, Glenn Muclaire – were sacrificed to save the reputations of their bosses  – Andy Coulson, (editor), Stuart Kuttner, (managing editor) and Les Hinton (Chairman of News International).
       For the next two years a 3-cornered defensive barrier, composed of News International, The Metropolitan Police Service and the Press Complaints Commission, stood firm around these other culprits. 

But in 2009 one of Mulcaire’s admitted victims, Gordon Taylor, sued the paper for invasion of privacy, and they settled – very privately – for a sum at least ten times greater than would have been awarded by a High Court judge. The disclosures that Taylor’s solicitor sought, if they had proceeded to trial, would have been not only embarrassing for senior management at News International, but positively incriminating for those who have always claimed to have had no knowledge of what Goodman and Mulcaire had been up to. This settlement was very thoroughly and properly uncovered by the Guardian’s Nick Davies, and (no coincidence) the day before the story appeared (July 9^th 2009), it was announced that Stuart Kuttner had been sacked, as he later admitted to the Culture, Media & Sport Committee.
       Since then, the barricades protecting the Screws men – Kuttner, Coulson and Hinton – have slowly been crumbling, and those who predict the imminent sinking of this once inviolable Titanic (and don’t want to be held to account) are beginning to let it be known that they have tales to tell of the systematic, endemic use of voicemail-hacking by Screws staff.
       Kuttner, wily old workhorse that he was, is completely dispensable although he’d been in the job at the Screws for 20 years; no doubt he’s still getting enough from them to keep up the subs at an Essex golf club or wherever he seeks his recreation.

But the other two are in more sensitive places.
Les Hinton is overall boss at the Wall Street Journal, jewel in the crown of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. That he should, quite recently have been involved in the smutty, illicit dealings of a dirty little rag back in England must really rattle Rupert, and thrill the New York Times.

Andy Coulson is the Prime Minister’s chief spinner. (He should have been dropped a long time ago, after he was seen on national TV stonewalling the members of the CMS Committee, making a laughing stock of himself with absurd, impossible denials.)

Recently the police, who had previously been obstructive to anyone seeking information about those who were targeted – and hacked – by Mulcaire, have been more forthcoming. Perhaps Assistant Commissioner John Yates, who was pretty guarded in his evidence to Parliament, now doesn’t want to be seen to be part of whatever arrangements existed between the former head of the investigation, Andy Hayman and the Screws (who now employ Hayman from time to time).

There is a long history of co-operation between the Screws and the Police, both the Met and the City of London forces. “Investigations Editor” Mazher Mahmood has called in their help on several occasions when setting up arrests in bogus criminal scenarios he has created exclusively for the front page of his newspaper, with arrests being timed for late Saturday, so as to preclude any rival Sunday papers from getting a line on them in time for the next day.

With several lawyers – some acting for multiple claimants – moving in, it’s a matter of time before one of the many lurking icebergs prevails, and truth starts pouring in to sink the old hulk.

Meanwhile, Gordon Taylor’s solicitor, Mark Lewis, who extracted over £700k in settlement from the Screws for his clients, is obliged to sue the Metropolitan Police Service, the Press Complaints Commission and their hopeless chairperson, Baroness Peta Buscombe for damages after they publicly stated that he had lied to the CMS Committee.
That he would have had nothing to gain in doing so, and the other parties had a great deal to lose if he was right, suggests that he has a solid case.
More follows.

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The government have revealed the salaries paid to their Special Advisors. Thus we lean that former News of the World editor, Andy Coulson, the PM’s communications director earns £140k, a tad less than his boss. And a lot less then the Conservatives were paying him. Boo Hoo…. or not?
You don’t suppose Andy might have retained a few CONSULTANCIES? Perhaps with his old bosses at NGN? His ultimate boss, Mr Rumplechops Murdoch was seen slipping into No 10 a couple of weeks ago; he may have tipped his former star editor a note or two, just to remind him who his real boss is.
Many of those who rejoiced at the Conservatives regaining (albeit slightly diluted) power are less than happy about the new PM’s choice of this tainted individual as his communications director. It was an overzealous quest for information that led to Coulson’s involvement in the Royal phone hacking scandal.
And without doubt, this is going to become clearer as more and more people sue the Screws for hacking into their voicemails, to the point where his denials will no longer hold water.
This appointment will undoubtedly turn around and bite the brave new government in the arse, if they are not brave enough to deal with it now.
Wisdom, foresight, openness – that’s what the punters want to see in their vigorous new PM.
NOT mendacious, sleazy little tabloid hacks running his PR.

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