PRIME Minister Cameron used his usual tactic at prime minister’s questions yesterday, when asked why he brought a criminal into 10 Downing Street and thereby tainted the government, despite numerous warnings that he should not on any account employ him.
Cameron refused to answer the question, and instead referred to the Leveson Inquiry.
However, Labour leader Miliband helped to sustain Cameron. He refused to call for the prime minister to resign, a call that would certainly have been made by Cameron if a Labour prime minister had been in his position.
The Speaker, Bercow, began the session by stating that he had taken legal advice on whether the issue of Coulson could even be raised at all in the House of Commons, the body that allegedly rules the country.
He told MPs he would allow references to Coulson’s conviction but not to the outstanding charges or any matters relating to sentencing. He urged MPs to ‘exercise restraint’.
The Prime Minister appointed Coulson as his media chief in July 2007 – six months after he had quit as News of the World editor.
He was forced to resign after the most determined defence of him by Cameron, after he became prime minister in 2010. In 2011, amid growing allegations about phone hacking during his time as editor of the NoW, Cameron was forced to ditch him.
Asked in the House of Commons what checks he had made before employing Coulson, the prime minister said he had asked him ‘if he knew about phone hacking, and he said he didn’t and I accepted those assurances and I gave him the job’.
Yesterday early afternoon, the judge in the phone-hacking trial rebuked Cameron for apologising for Coulson, while he faced other charges that were before the jury.
He said that he had considered halting proceedings earlier after Coulson’s lawyer criticised Prime Minister David Cameron’s ‘ill-advised and premature intervention’ in the case.
After these interventions were made, the jury was unable to reach a judgement on the further charges against Coulson and journalist Clive Goodman.
A decision on any retrial will be made on Monday, the judge said. However, the colossal expense of the enterprise thus far, will probably be used to rule out a retrial and Coulson will then face perhaps two years at the most in an open prison, hardly a spell on Devil’s Island, hardly the end of the Murdoch empire.
The truth of the matter is the Murdoch press and its methods have been at the centre of British government since the Malvinas war in 1982, and the 1984-85 miners’ strike and the 1986-87 printers’ struggle.
Thatcher favoured Murdoch in his take-over of entire sections of the media while he backed up her various anti-union wars. They became indispensable to each other, and the Murdoch media became an indispensable part of the British state.
It wooed police chiefs into working for Murdoch on retirement while leading Murdoch reporters found jobs in the Metropolitan Police press department, and even in 10 Downing Street.
This is the regime that grew and flourished under Thatcher, then Major and finally the Blair and Brown Labour governments.
Then the phone-hacking scandal erupted and with it the degree to which the government, the police and the Murdoch empire’s personnel had become interchangeable, and as well, that ordinary people like the Dowler and McCann families were deemed to be fair targets for hacking etc.
Despite all this, Miliband was still got by the Sun to hold it up like a red rag to the bull of the Liverpool populace!
The fact is that all the entire hue and cry over Murdoch has produced just one scapegoat, Coulson; the ruling class as a whole have escaped.
Another fact is that the hacking methods are now old hat. Entire spying systems have now been developed by the capitalist state capable of surveying everybody on the planet. Snowden and Assange have shown how the NSA and GCHQ have got us all in their sights. Home Secretary May is even now preparing a spy’s charter!
The truth is that only a socialist revolution can smash the Murdoch empire and all the spies of capitalism, by smashing the capitalist state itself. This is the task that is directly ahead!