Originally posted @ 11:02 pm, Fri 21st Jan 2011
How long since there has been such a dramatic 24 hours of political news?
Disappointed for Alan Johnson, I was listening to Tony Blair's second appearance of the Iraq Inquiry when the news of David Cameron's Communication Director resignation was announced.
David Cameron continued to use Andy Coulson even though the case that prompted him to resign as Editor of the News of the World was not over. I've seen Tories complain about Peter Mandelson having to resign twice, but David Cameron has achieved something new in using someone who has now had to resign twice over the same issue.
George Osborne sounded like an football pundit by defending Alan Coulson for giving one hundred and ten per cent. Celebrating hard work rather than smart work.
It's harder to work out how effective he is. Some say he was vital to Cameron getting elected as PM; others pointing out that the Conservatives still did not win the General Election. And in the medium term, the strategic director of the Conservatives has been responsible for setting up the messages such as "Big Society", "We're all in this together" and the exaggerated scale of cuts is needed because of the crisis in the finance markets in June. These and other messages are set to fail in the medium term.
Andrew Neill of the BBC has ssid today that they chose today to announce the resignation to bury the news because of Tony Blair's appearance at the inquiry, and that they got this wrong. If this is right, well he can't have been that good a communications director.
Andrew Neill takes it further - that the News of the World used phone hacking on an industrial scale; the most astonishing interview of the day was a News of the World journalist condemning Coulson for not backing his journalists up publicly in their defiance of the law in tapping phones to expose celebrities' privates lives in the public interest.
John Prescott and Andrew Neill also expressed surprise that the Police did not properly prosecute this matter, in that the evidence victims are now using in civil cases is from the Police.
The News of the World's defence about one rogue reporter is starting to fall apart with repercussions for the Murdoch empire's aspiration to expand its TV operations in the UK, and their ability to expand may well be in the hands of Conservative ministers.
This is not over - one hundred and ten per cent.
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