Politicians are swarming all over the phone hacking scandal today, in even greater
number than during the past week. If it isn’t the main topic at PMQs at noon, then it certainly will be immediately afterwards; when David Cameron delivers his statement on an inquiry into the
whole mess. And then there’s Labour’s Opposition Day motion, urging Rupert Murdoch to withdraw his bid for BSkyB. By the end of the day, our parliamentarians will surely have delivered an official
reprimand to the News Corp boss and his ambitions.
The news that the government will vote in favour of Ed Miliband’s motion has sucked some of the vicious factionalism out of today’s proceedings. But, never fear, there will still be plenty of political one-upmanship to go around. Labour will no doubt take the opportunity to probe Cameron about the specifics of Andy Coulson’s employment in 10 Downing St. While the Prime Minister will hope that his statement is comprehensive enough to quieten some of the braying voices around him. It will also be instructive to see how much he takes the fight to Labour — accusing them of ignoring these problems as they stewed over the past decade — and whether he brings up Tom Baldwin’s role as Miliband’s pressman, as Jeremy Hunt did on Monday.
And the politics don’t stop there. The above image is the cover of today’s Sun, a further escalation of News International’s scrap with Gordon Brown. And there’s news from America of prominent Senators calling for investigations into whether any US citizens were targeted by the phone hackers. Murdoch’s problems are increasingly global, even if everyone’s attention is focused on a little patch of Westminster today.
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