Phone hacking saga to run and run

The charging of former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in connection with phone hacking at the News of the World can only add to the growing sense of political crisis in Britain.

Prime minister Cameron, a close friend of Brooks and her husband Charlie, must have hoped that the hacking saga would be brought to a close by the Leveson inquiry, which is due to report later this year.

But with serious charges levelled against Brooks, her husband and four other former News International employees over the alleged concealment of evidence, a lengthy trial will figure in the second half of this government’s scheduled life.

Cameron, who used to sign text messages to Brooks “LOL” (intended, apparently, to mean lots of love rather than “laugh out loud”), is due to give evidence before Leveson in the next few weeks.

So is culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, who is fighting for his political life following accusations that his office guided News International as Rupert Murdoch’s corporation sought to buy up remaining shares in the  broadcaster BSkyB.

Their evidence is bound to throw up even more questions about the close relationship between Murdoch’s empire and successive government. Brooks, for example, also regarded the former New Labour prime minister Blair as a friend.

Yesterday, Alastair Campbell, who was Blair’s press secretary, had to explain why Labour changed its policy on media ownership before the 1997 election. He naturally denied it was anything to do with Murdoch’s influence (although the magnate had switched support to Labour from the Tories).

But the 2003 Communications Act was welcomed by Murdoch. It  represented New Labour thinking about globalisation, markets and ownership. It allowed cross-media ownership – newspapers owning TV stations – and opened up the market to non-British companies.

“Ownership rules must reflect the reality of a global marketplace,” the then culture secretary Tessa Jowell told MPs. Many of the media specific rules in force that prohibited particular accumulations of broadcast licences, or combinations of press and broadcasting interests were abolished. Media concentration was primarily to be dealt with on a case by case basis.

What is clear in all this is that governments have gone down on bended knees to powerful corporate interests – especially newspaper owners and bankers – and basically saw nothing wrong with doing so. We can only guess why police investigations into phone hacking got nowhere under New Labour.

Labour knighted seven bankers and even had people like RBS chief Fred Goodwin leading government task forces on credit unions (!). Regulation was so “light-touch” as to be non-existent. When the crisis broke in 2008, everyone seemed mightily surprised. Ordinary people, of course, are paying the price for all this, which is the way it is under a corporatocracy.

The ConDem coalition was cobbled together not so much in the “national interest”, as Cameron and Clegg insist, but in the interests of the financial markets and big business. Its growing instability is the result of a resistance to its policies and a general hatred of its public school persona.

The phone hacking scandal has claimed scalps at the highest level of the Metropolitan Police, led to the closure of a newspaper and many arrests. With the Tory right on the rampage and looking for a new leader, who knows where it will all end?

Paul Feldman

Communications editor                           

When the sky was the limit for Murdoch

While the attention of most people was focused on the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, legislation was making its way through Parliament that would open up media ownership and create the conditions for Rupert Murdoch’s empire to flourish in Britain.

The Communications Act 2003 received Royal Assent on 17 July 2003 and represented New Labour thinking about globalisation, markets and ownership. It allowed cross-media ownership – newspapers owning TV stations – and opened up the market to non-British companies.

“Ownership rules must reflect the reality of a global marketplace,” the then culture secretary Tessa Jowell told MPs.

Many of the media specific rules in force that prohibited particular accumulations of broadcast licences, or combinations of press and broadcasting interests were abolished. Media concentration was primarily to be dealt with on a case by case basis.

The secretary of state was given power to block any deals that might threaten “plurality” in any sector, although this measure was forced on the government by a revolt in the Lords led by Labour peer Lord Puttnam. The real clout went to a non-government body, the regulator Ofcom which itself was there to champion competition and the market as its first priority.

In his acute analysis about the political elite and its relationship to the media, and Murdoch in particular, John Harris notes how Margaret Thatcher cleared the way for his move into British television. But he adds that “as with so many things, the rot decisively started under New Labour”, saying:

“The Murdoch factor undoubtedly informed swaths of New Labour politics: not least, an ingrained reluctance to embrace the more economically interventionist aspects of the European Union, and a reckless belief that Britain should always support American foreign policy, no matter how dangerous the consequences (never forget: all of Murdoch's newspapers loudly backed the invasion of Iraq).”

He relates how two Labour MPs as far back as 1996 had mysteriously disappeared during a crucial vote on a clause in a Tory bill that gave Murdoch monopoly over the equipment required to watch BskyB. The vote was tied 11-11, “Murdoch got his way – and we began our passage into that brave new TV world where BSkyB has a UK market share of 80%.”

Harris suggest that the price of cosying up to Murdoch was an electoral quid quo pro. He cites Blair’s press secretary Alastair Campbell who in his diaries refers to a meeting with senior News International figures: "I emphasised that they had to understand that there would be a big price to pay in the party if we restricted and curbed the natural desires of people to do something about Murdoch, and ultimately the Sun and News of the World really went for us.”

After Blair resigned in 2007, Murdoch’s papers began their shift away from New Labour and plumped for the Tories in 2009. David Cameron was feted and courted by Murdoch and took on Andy Coulson, first at the Tory Party and then in Downing Street. The rest, as they say, is history.

The British political regime is imploding and not just because some phones were hacked by unscrupulous journalists and investigations. It’s a case of one scandal too many because it follows the banking collapse, involving financiers close to and admired by New Labour, the MPs expenses scandal that undermined any residual trust in Parliament and attempts to offload the economic crisis on to the backs of ordinary people.

Harris is worried that the crisis might “actually push us into a deadening stand-off between most of those at the top, and a public who now simply trust no one at all”. He is right to be concerned. This is a profound moment for a political system that few have any faith in to sort out pressing problems. A plan for a truly democratic alternative to a corrupt, market state in thrall to corporate power is more urgent than ever.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor