The crisis gets closer to the Tories

commentator

Rewind the clock fifty years to when left-leaning out-of-touch patricians were last making a hash of running the Tory Party and you find Profumo. As the French would put it, plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose.

mike

Am I the only one who finds this incomprehensible? Both parties have fawned over these men, Labour as much, or more so, than Conservative.
Absent proof that Cameron was personally aware of what was going on, I don't see why he should be singled out for criticism as he has been.

Viv Evans

Excuse me - is there evidence that Wallis actually worked for the Tory Party?

I am under the impression that the rumours flying around (tweeted by rather interested parties) are that Coulson may have had some informal advice - or not, who knows - by his friend, Mr Wallis, before the the GE. And that Cameron should have known about of this possible, informal, unknown 'advice' given to Coulson.
Therefore, so the rumours, Cameron must go ...

Is it now the political fashion to make a PM resign because of totally unsubstantiated rumours, which are bruited about while he is absent on a long planned state visit/

Is it now accepted procedure that a PM, before his election, must grill his advisers about all and any informal talks they had with friends unknown to the PM at that time?

I think the insanity in the Westminster Bubble has reached unprecedented levels today.

English Electric

Advise him of what, though? This is a non-story on an otherwise interesting day.

strapworld

"I have become, unfairly, a part of this scandal it is therefore with regret that, for the sake of the country and my party I have announced I will step down as leader and Prime Minister as soon as a successor has been appointed"

Marcellus

Come on James: it's time for you to 'fess up. Not content with an afternoon spent misrepresenting (on the live feed) the evidence being given to the committee, you are now presenting every scrap of new information as if it represents the smoking gun without any attempt to carry out a mature and reasoned analysis. You seem to be trying to engineer (not report and analyse) the news. Humour us, and share with us the reasoned analysis behind your suggestion that pre-election discussion(s) between Coulson and Wallis in some way compromise the PM. Why should it?

Tiberius

The Tory party's reputation, James? You mean that non-existent characteristic rebuilt by Cameron after years of being the party of sleaze?

Some people do have short (or perhaps selective) memories.

Frederick de Fossard

Hear, hear, Viv. Utter hysteria.

annassasin

Poor old dave.

Death by a 1000 cuts. He hires a person who probably, allowed bad things to be done. Many claim the warned someone who should have warned him. We don't yet know who pushed Coulson except Ozzy. A background check was done by who?

Now a notw media advisor has advised Coulson allegedly. In other words a chat over a beer.

This soap opera,
Should never be enough to remove the PM, unless it is proved that Dave changed the law for NI, or new about extent of phone hacking.

Ed has done well, he is no longer dead in the water as he was 2 weeks ago, he is now a hipicritical, one issue chancer.

If he had not gone for it he would have been out by autumn, he simply had no choice. Now he needs to show some sense and statesmanship, cool it down, otherwise he will lose respect of general public, who will see the desperation and irresponsible tactics for what they are.

Now the media is getting dizzy with all the pace, now chasing it's own tail, with resultant lack of clarity that in these times can cause great harm.

The truth is all we ask for, it should not be for twitter to deliver a version it.

dorothy wilson

Stephen Glover in today's Mail: "Mr Cameron must now be in no doubt, though, that it is his scalp which the Labour Party, the Guardian and the BBC really want".

Tiberius: Indeed. Labour's record of dodgy dossiers built on plagarised notes from a student thesis, Damian McBride et al and smear campaigns directed at 90 year old ladies seems to have been entirely forgotten.

Woody

As someone who lives in the north west, I can tell you this is on nobody's radar here.

I sometimes look at what happens in Westminster/London and I think I'm living in another country.

I see a lot of those metropolitan lefties who work for the BBC don't want to come 'up north' well good riddance we don't want you.

Bluebottle

I don’t care.

I don’t care who said what to whom or who knew what someone else was up to when they worked for NI/ Number 10/ The Met (delete as appropriate). Who, apart from the political class, gives a stuff?

The economy’s tanking, another soldier was killed in Afghanistan, we’re bombing Libya for who knows what purpose, we are about to send billions more into the black hole that is the EU, and all the governing elite can do is examine the contents of Rupert Murdoch’s navel, oozing hypocrisy from every pore as they do so.

Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.

2trueblue

James, what crisis are you alluding to? Watch channel 85 or 89, not so hysterical as BBC, and not so biased. There is a world out there and the UK is part of it. Cameron has a job to do, unlike Millipede. It has been hard for Millipede to fill his hours and Liebore are very busy, but still not many facts. A mate had a chat with a mate and that it? Get yourself a nice glass of wine.

Yosemite Sam

Woody I live up north too. This evening, as is my wont, I meandered down to my local for a pint. A few minutes after arrival, the manager turned on the news. Almost with one voice there was a cry of 'turn it off' - everyone is fed up with it all over the papers and TV. But I would ask for one matter of elucidation from those who keep up with these things. What is the great significance of this advice this Wallis give to Coulson before the election?

Mirtha Tidville

@Woody

Well said, likewise in Yorkshire..Outisde of London this really has been done to death. The sooner they go on holiday the sooner it will all be forgotten.....and it will

Myles Harrison

So the news that two friends spoke is somehow translated into a headline. This is utterly irrelevant to anything. I read the Spectator because I want to be informed about what is going on. You are failing badly, have nothing to report and so just make up any old rubbish.

Stephen Byrne

"how dysfunctional the Tory party machine was pre-election" - do you mean, not lying and smearing?

anyfool

does being a news editor make you see things from a completely different angle to anyone else, Mr Forsyth your writings do not resemble any objective take on the current midsummer madness about hacking, this will die out about a week into the recess. your best bet is to look for a job at the BBC as you look and sound like a media studies reporter (failed)

Richard Marriott

So what is the provenance of the information that Wallis was talking to Coulson? Where did it originate? Is it even true? If it is, why does it matter - Coulson and Wallis obviously were previously acquainted.

In short, isn't this another attempt to make a mountain out of a very little molehill?

Thommo

The hyperventilating take of the increasingly deranged Telegraph on this topic is headed "Phone hacking: Neil Wallis 'advised Andy Coulson before election'", the quote apparently drawn from a statement issued by the Conservative Party. Yet the statement itself (which is reproduced in the report) states that "it has been drawn to our attention that he may have provided Andy Coulson with some informal advice on a voluntary basis before the election", i.e. someone has made an accusation to this effect, although the source of this accusation is not given. Yet this doesn't stop the political editor of the Telegraph from claiming that this flimsy piece of unsubtantiated (and possibly malicious) tittle-tattle reprsents "an astonishing admission by Downing Street". Surely this is the stuff of madness?

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TGF UKIP

Strapworld, fat chance unfortunately. This is the character who lied to his own backbenchers to get them into this poisonous coalition just to save his own miserable hide after blowing an election almost any other Tory leader would have massively won at a canter.

What is also particularly ironic and completely unremarked is that one of the principal reasons for that failure was the absence of any convincing personal or policy appeal to the ordinary Joe Bloggs voter. In short, our poisonous Essex Boy was either fucking useless at bringing any popular or populist touch or he was totally ignored. Bet he kept a diary though.

DavidDP

"Mr Cameron must now be in no doubt, though, that it is his scalp which the Labour Party, the Guardian and the BBC really want"."

As do the right wing headbangers in the Tory party. The glee that they might somehow get him to step down by keeping this running is palpable.

Tom Pride

Mirtha Tidville
July 19th, 2011 8:29pm

“Outisde of London this really has been done to death.”

Hang on there! London’s no different . . . it’s only media talks to media talks to politicians talks to media . . . with the Statists and their media chums seeing an opportunity to create an “impartial” press to partner their “impartial” broadcasters.

I thought both Murdochs did well out of the day. James put on a solid performance and Rupert – well, I’m sure he’s taking some quiet pride from the instantaneous, instinctive reaction of his wife.

Dimoto

James Forsyth - now auditioning for a job at the BBC.

Tommo

James, you are Ed Balls and I claim my £5.

Ganymede

Woody well said, here in Wiltshire its the same, people are not interested they are more concerned with everyday matters, jobs, homes, family. The media is letting the public down and is ignoring more serious matters like British and US economies and the euro crisis.

Sir Everard Digby

I agree with many other comments - there is only so long a pantomime can hold our attention.The political classes and their client media don't want to engage with reality,as that would expose them for what they really are.Fantasists and liars.

The current myth that the previous Government was somehow never involved in similar activity or had any close links with Murdoch is farcical. If this crisis is creeping closer to Cameron, it ain't far off the rest of them.

That the media and one part of the political spectrum expect us to believe this were so, exposes the degree of hubris both possess. This confirms to the man in the street that they are completely out of touch,arrogant and incapable.

Does anyone seriously believe that Kieth Vaz has the nerve to accuse NI of holding up an investigation,whilst conveniently ignoring the same behaviour amongst certain MPs during the expenses scandal?

I am personally fed up with being preached at by hypocrites,lied to to get my vote and having opinion presented by the media as news.

It will never be fixed until we get rid of them all.

Scott

this is madness. If this is bad and requires the PM to resign then why not Blair during the doggy dossier revelations, or Gordon Brown during the smeargate scandal. Weren't these worse examples of insidious actions by the PM or their aids to pervert the role of Government. I do not see any of that here. Madness!

Pramston

This whole affair has become a smear campaign aimed at David Cameron. Rumour and gossip have been routinely presented as fact and the mood music suggesting that some how the Tories are culpable in all this is reaching a crescendo. They are not culpable, Cameron is not responsible for phone hacking and would be extremely unlikley to have had knowledge of it even if Coulson did (which is not proven). The entire affair is becoming an unseemly farce with Ed Milliband playing it for all its worth, misusing the victims of crime in his own little game of spin, vengeance and deceit. The Dowlers are being used for political ends and given that the police must have undertaken every possible forensic investigation of the telephones linked to the case surely the facts of this could be made public sooner rather than later?

Sir Bufton Tufton

What an absolute shower!

canonalberic

Oh do shut up.

FvH

Cameron is lame duck even if ge hangs on.
His integrity as leader will be gone so he will be even less likely to carry serious reform
He was never the right choice
He sounded the part but he was really just a posh PR spiv
We will now gave to wait god knows how long for serious reform
Sad!

MLB

So what if Causton spoke to wallis they knew eachother,Politicians are not detectives, the police said Andy Causton was ok to employ and they trusted wallis.
Even Ed Miliband Trusted Andy Caustons judgement before employing Tom Baldwin although i am sure he as forgotten that and will continue with the grandstanding!

vulture

Despite the screeches of the Camerloons that this has nothing to do with Dave, I fear it has.

Hence the deafening silence from No.10. And from the MPs who should be loyally supporting him.

Dave spent Christmas with Brooks FFS! You can't get much closer than that.

The truth, surely, is this: Dave is the fag end of a culture of corruption in place since the mid-1990s that has seen British politics, British Police and British Press enmeshed in an increasingly sticky web of Mafiaesque immorality.

Dave sees nothing wrong in that because he is a louche product of privilege that understands nothing of how 99% of his fellow
Britons think and live. He is the proud heir to Blair.

And that means the heir to lies, spin, smears, secret briefings and dirt.

The way out of this ripe mess is not a return to the equally tainted Miliband with his own Coulson clone Baldwin STILL at his side whispering poison.

Instead Tory MPs must purge their party of Dave and his rotten little clique and bring in a new leadership with sound policies:
freeing us from the EU stranglehold; restoring our borders and pour own Laws, cutting crime and taxes and (not least) abolishing the BBBC License fee. Such a programme would sweep the nation.

Mrs M L Bonwick-Jones

pramston i totally agree with you,
To use what is a crime for a spot of grandstanding is wrong, and to use Milly Dowler to try and make yourself more popular is a disgrace!
But remember this is just a cunning ploy
Making this an issue of Cavid Camerons judgement or should i say Goerge Osbornes judgement as he was the one who found Andy Causton this is ment to distract from the fact that Ed Miliband still has no policy, or direction-he is just a annoying little wasp! What will he do if Andy Causton proves innocent a real leader would know when to stop Ed policy free Miliband is heading for a fall and so is the unpolitically motivated overly bloated bbc!

Megan

I think you've been inside the Westminster bubble too long James! Maybe a nice summer break will help you get a better sense of perspective?

JohnBUK

Thank you everyone above. For some time now I've been wondering if my ability to follow this and understand it had somehow diminished as I couldn't work out why it was of any interest. I see I'm not alone.

Private Schultz

Yes, I'm with the vast majority of posters on this thread too, particularly Sir Everard and Pramston.

James, if you have to get a regular fix on this story, why not do some proper investigative journalism into links with the party in power when all this hacking took place? For exmple, Ms Brooks said, I think, that she had seen David Cameron once at No 10 since he became PM, but that during the last administration she saw Blair and Brown (both as PM and when he was Chancellor, as well as Blair) regularly, about 6 times a year???