Andrew Coulson, former Editor of the News of the World, has been found guilty of conspiracy to hack phones while he was in post.
This is the man whom David Cameron employed as his Director of Communications. When direct allegations first surfaced against Coulson, Cameron doggedly defended Coulson for as long as he could – and for far longer than he should. Now Cameron has offered a “full and frank apology” for his error of judgement.
There can be little doubt that this will cause severe damage to Cameron, a man who is struggling to stay in control of his Party after last month’s less than impressive election results and who is having difficulty keeping the peace among his warring cabinet members. Cameron is looking old and tired and would in any event have found it hard to be an inspirational leader as we head towards next year’s General Election. Coulson’s conviction will leave him wounded in the eyes of the press – making his leadership job all the harder. There may well be Tories agitating for a last minute change of leader, hoping to install Boris Johnson as the only Tory charismatic enough to fend off the challenge from Nigel “mine’s a pint” Farage. However, the Party is probably too divided for any one challenge to succeed: the most likely outcome is that Cameron is safe, but his party is not.
One thing which will please the Prime Minister, though, is the astonishing news that his personal friend Rebekah Brooks has been found not guilty of the charges raised against her. Her “entourage” – her husband, PA and head of security – have been cleared of perverting the course of justice. The jury decided, and we’ll have to accept their verdict. However, Ms Brooks has, despite the court outcome, been found clearly guilty of the crime of complete stupidity. If she was not aware that her newspaper scoops were coming from phone hacking, where on earth did she think the information was coming from? Did she really assume her reporters had found all their facts from human sources?
It took the jury a week to arrive at this round of verdicts, and they are still considering some other related charges against Coulson. The consequences of their decisions, though, are likely to be felt in political circles for considerably longer.