Labour senses scandal could hurt not just the Murdoch operation, but also the prime minister
ED MILIBAND strode into a press conference in the Royal Festival Hall yesterday morning overlooking the Thames in confident mood, happy that he is on the right side of public mood in the scandal engulfing the Murdoch empire.
Indeed, he has a right to be confident, given that this is the first time in his leadership when he has managed to exploit a gap in prime minister David Cameron’s defences, even if it is one entirely of Cameron’s making, and not because of Miliband’s own skills.
An immediate inquiry had to be launched, Miliband demanded, and key documentation protected, including e-mails and other records held in No 10 Downing Street and the Conservative Party’s headquarters.
The pointed charge that No 10 should face with a judge’s sledgehammer left the Conservatives apoplectic; but it illustrates the damage Labour now believes the scandal could cause, not just to the Murdoch operations, but also to Cameron.
Miliband has been helped by the Conservatives’ handling of events. He had made it clear that he would call a House of Commons vote tomorrow to pressurise culture secretary Jeremy Hunt into delaying a decision on the BSkyB takeover until criminal investigations were completed.
Faced with this, Conservatives talked about the legal restraints; but the issue had gone beyond that as public opinion would not wear News Corp’s complete takeover of BSkyB in the current atmosphere.
It was inevitable that the deal would be delayed. News Corp had given enough assurances to Hunt in January about protecting Sky News’s independence so he could avoid sending the deal to the competition commission – this would have delayed it for months.
With News Corp withdrawing those assurances, Hunt was free to send the bid to the competition body. It must be assumed that News Corp did so only after reading the signals and did not have much choice in the matter.
However, Miliband has to tread carefully, since his own communications chief Tom Baldwin, a former Timesof London journalist, faces allegations from former Conservative party treasurer Michael Ashcroft that he (Baldwin) used private detectives to get details of the Tory man's bank accounts when he was investigating donations to the Conservatives.
The Conservatives have tried repeatedly to get the Baldwin story out, but have not managed to do so effectively. Ashcroft is not a sympathetic figure, and has faced many allegations about his business dealings in the past. Andy Coulson, Rebekah Brooks and News International collectively remain the core of the story, but, nevertheless, the Baldwin issue will not go away.
Labour has its own sins for which to atone. In 2003 Rebekah Brooks told the Commons’s culture, media and sport committee that the News of the World had made payments to police. No one did anything. The police did not investigate; neither did then prime minister Tony Blair.
Indeed, the press was equally not interested, bar the Guardian, and even its real focus on the issue did not come until much later.
In 2006 the UK information commissioner reported that a dozen newspapers – some News International titles, some not – had used a private detective to get private information about hundreds of individuals in ways that breached the Data Protection Act. Again, the story went nowhere. In the Commons yesterday, Hunt gleefully quoted from former Labour adviser Jonathan Powell’s autobiography, when he said that Gordon Brown had not wanted to delve deeper because he needed to “court” the press.
Some in Labour’s ranks are unhappy with Miliband’s apologies for Labour’s failings in office, scenting disloyalty to Blair and a desire to put distance between himself and Brown. For now, however, Miliband can enjoy the freedom of being leader of the opposition, and not prime minister. His own failings and those of Labour, while interesting and important, are not under the spotlight. David Cameron is, and for the first time in his premiership he is struggling.
