There’s no doubt about the big story this week: Rupert Murdoch being forced to close the biggest-selling British newspaper in a brazen bid to ride out the illegal hacking story that threatens his media empire.
Vince Cable’s prophetic powers first came to prominence during the economic storm that came close to collapsing the banking system. Last December, he accidentally went on the record to make clear his wish to clip Rupert Murdoch’s wings. Ironically, it was the Telegraph’s widely condemned subterfuge which stopped Vince in his tracks, and prevented his ability to hold to account the company where illegal hacking was rife. Here’s what he inadvertently revealed to the Telegraph last year:
(Also available on the Telegraph website here.)
Then there’s ‘Our Shirl’, Baroness Williams, who powerfully made the point on Question Time this week that the Liberal Democrats alone have refused to play footsie with Rupert and Rebekah — unlike David Cameron, who dines at Ms Brooks’ table at Christmas, or Ed Miliband, who just a few days ago paid court at News International’s summer party:
(Also available on YouTube here.)
And let’s not forget the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, who warned David Cameron against appointing the tainted Andy Coulson to the Downing Street communications post he was forced out of earlier this year. Here he is condemning in no uncertain terms the media’s and police’s scandalous misjudgements alongside the failings of the self-regulatory body, the Press Complaints Commission, which he labels a “busted flush”:
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15 Comments
shame you have to do the reminding as these are blatantly being edited out of BBC coverage, in case it shows the Lib Dems favourably.
Yes John is absolutely right the BBC’s Nick Robinson clearly stated on the News that all Political parties were in Murdoch’s pocket. I have complained twiice already, please keep up the pressure on the biased BBC.
LibDem figures have an honourable record on this; but, Roger and John, this really is not the best time to start complaining that news outlets are not reporting events exactly as you want them to.
~alec
Had people been watching the review of tomorrow’s papers on at 11.30 on BBC News 24, as I have, you would have seen precisely the point made about the Lib Dems by one of the contributors, and I do feel that Annita McVeigh, the news presenter on duty, try to sideline the comments.
The Observer has a headline saying Paddy had warned No 10 not to continue with Coulson in Government.
And which way will LibDem MPs vote on the Labour motion to halt the BSkyB takeover? Talk is cheap….
“the Liberal Democrats alone have refused to play footsie with Rupert and Rebekah — unlike David Cameron, who dines at Ms Brooks’ table at Christmas, or Ed Miliband, who just a few days ago paid court at News International’s summer party:”
You neglect to mention that Nick Clegg was at that party too. Unless Cameron had him there to serve the canapes I imagine he was doing a bit of cosying up to NI as well. You are right that Baroness Williams was magnificent on QT though.
This is a Liberal issue – we need never compromise on our core values. The economy called for a toning down of our hopes – we lost the trust of millions of people. Now we can, hopefully, regain that trust.
On the detention of children for immigration purposes (after 1,000s detained under Labour) a parliamentary answer I received last week stated that most recent figures (March 31 2011) no children were in such detention. Thank you Nick.
In the areas of civil rights and liberties there must never be room for compromise.
I presume ‘savages’ is being used in the context of Denis Healey’s ‘dead sheep’ variety when describing an attack on him by Geoffrey Howe.
In my view only Shirley gets any real credit I’m afraid. I’ll explain why:
Vince blurted out a statement to someone he had just met about Quasi Judicial powers that he had no business discussing with any constituent. As such he lost the powers he had and probably rightly so. To act in a legal manner in his position he needed to be balanced. If a Judge had told someone how he would rule on a case halfway through it we would be demanding his resignation….
Nick had numerous chances to distance himself from Coulson and could have backed calls for an enquiry ahead of Cameron. Apparently, and along with Cameron, he was warned about Coulson prior to agreeing to form the Government. He should have demanded that he had no position within the Government, after all he demanded Labour ditch their leader as a pre-condition to any chance of forming a coalition with them. Having a despicable man who spied on peoples privacy for comercial gain at the heart of Government was clearly not as important to him.
Brooks has been a figure head for so many of the problems at News Corp that calling for her to resign or be suspended is the only sensible thing to do and again Clegg should have done so and done so early. More examples of where the “love in” has yet to be replaced by a proper and more robust coalition.
@AndrewR: “You neglect to mention that Nick Clegg was at that party too.”
Where do you get your information from on this? In this interview he says he didn’t go to the NI summer party. Do you have a source you’d care to cite which contradicts this?
– Andy
NI Summer party
Apologies. I didn’t read the Guardian report carefully enough. Seems Clegg was at the NI summer party last year but presumably wasn’t at this year’s if the report in the Indy is accurate. Don’t see that it makes a lot of difference though.
Fair enough. Possibly all it indicates is that Nick managed to have the foresight to see this as an issue which was rapidly coming down the pipe a couple of weeks ago, but not the foresight to have seen it coming this time last year. Which is slightly better than Cameron, but not overly impressive.
I very much doubt he’d done much Murdoch shmoozing before the coalition, so I’m betting he’s kicking himself now that he ever wavered from that position.
It’s been established that it was only last year’s one. Whoopsie, all the same. Then we have the matter of coalition with a party whose leader was shmoozing with NI. When power beckoned – unlike previous years and decades when the LibDems simply weren’t important enough for NI to entertain – he didn’t have much adversion to a NI boy, did he?
Again, individual LibDems – especially Williams – have had noble records on this, but Tom Watson or Chris Bryant or John Prescott aint LibDem. Nor is Nick Davis.
Remember the expenses scandal when we were told the LibDems were untainted? Remember David Laws? Self-importance can so easily be pricked.
Just ‘cos NI is in a tailspin at the moment, doesn’t mean youse should start sounding like them with talk of Biased BBC., lest youse want at some point the sobriquet Lax LibDems to be applied.
~alec