The hacking trials aren’t even half the issue. The hard, unavoidable fact remains that the power of the Murdoch press – the real unspoken stain behind the Brooks-Coulson trials – is undiminished and has still not been broken. It is best illustrated by the run-up of events to the long-planned Murdoch campaign to take over BSkyB, a scheme that would have added some £8bn to the Murdoch empire as well as giving him a virtual stranglehold over the British media.
It began with Murdoch’s calculation in 2009 that a switch of the Sun to the Tories would make them indebted to him – perhaps even outlined in an informal deal – over his BSkyB objective. The game plan then began with James Murdoch meeting Cameron at a hotel in London in September 2009 to tell him that the Sun was switching sides. Continue reading
For eight months now the press have been allowed to pursue every finagling twist and turn to avoid being held to account after the horrors of the hacking scandal in the hope that memories of their illegal behaviour will gradually fade and they can then return yet again to business as usual, like the banks.
ameron has just, shortly before 1pm today, conceded a deal over the Leveson proposals for press regulation which provides for everything that the Labour & LibDem parties were demanding. He did that, not because he believes it, but because he knew he would lose the vote and will do anything to avoid the humiliation of a parliamentary defeat. It is a triumph for Ed Miliband and his Labour team who have (rightly) not tried to rub his face in it – however much he might deserve it, given his back-room cabals with the newspaper publishers to block a new democratic settlement at any cost – but have consented to tease out an all-party agreement as being the best solution, so long as it contains all the elements needed to ensure that an abusive press can be effectively held to account. And this agreement does contain that. 
Mark Ferguson raises an important issue which has been neglected in the last minute deal-making and it is important albeit not what most politicians are currently hacked-off about — on the important question of whether the deal meets the requirement of adequate statutory backing see