House of Comments - Episode 39 - Crossing the Rubicon

Episode 39 of the House of Comments podcast "Crossing the Rubicon" was recorded yesterday evening and is out today. This week myself and Emma Burnell were joined by libertarian blogger Mark Wallace to discuss the Leveson report and political reaction to it, the recent by-elections especially with respect to the UKIP surge and what we would like to see in the Chancellor's pre-budget statement this week.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here (note - this is a new feed so if you used to subscribe to the old feed a couple of years ago you'll need to do so again).

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 39 - Crossing the Rubicon’ on Audioboo

If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too!

David Cameron may just have made the biggest mistake of his career

The details almost don't matter. His plaintive cries of "Won't somebody please think of the independence of the press" will fall on deaf ears. David Cameron has made the wrong call on one of the main issues that he will be remembered for.

When the phone hacking scandal kicked off last year Cameron was a bit slow off the mark and allowed Ed Miliband to carve himself out a niche as doughty defender of those who had been wronged by a rapacious media. But as our PM has consistently demonstrated, right from when he first made that electrifying speech at Conservative conference in 2005 which probably won him the leadership when his back's against the wall he can come out fighting.

I was in the Strangers Gallery on that day last July when Cameron made his speech in response to the hacking crisis in the Commons. It was another top notch political performance. In exactly the same way as he has managed to find the right tone for responses to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry and the Hillsborough Inquiry, he managed it on that day too. I was heartened to see how much the Prime Minister "got it". He understood that the press was out of control and he set up the Leveson Inquiry to tackle this precise problem.

In a few minutes yesterday with his denial of implementing Leveson in full including the required statutory underpinning he pissed all of this away.

A couple of key vignettes from yesterday's coverage of this stick in my mind.

The first was Jane Winter one of the phone hacking victims during the "Hacked Off" press conference who was almost in tears as she explained how she felt "betrayed" by Cameron. In correspondence with Ms Winter, the PM had promised to implement the proposals "as long as they are not bonkers". A small amount of statute to ensure the press abide by the rules that they are allowed to set themselves is not bonkers. Everyone can see that it is not bonkers, even those who disagree with statute. Everyone can see that the PM has not adhered to either the spirit or even the letter of his promises on this issue.

The second was on BBC's This Week last night where Michael Portillo highlighted in 30 seconds just how pointless the whole exercise of Leveson has been now that Cameron has made it clear he will not be backing his key recommendation. His view is that we might as well not have bothered. The press now have nothing to fear and can basically go back to business as usual was his analysis. I'm not sure this is 100% right. There is still political pressure for the press to reform. But without a way of ensuring they stick to their promises I am sure it is only a matter of time before they revert to type. They always have done in the past after the many inquiries there have been in the last 70 years. Without statute there is absolutely no reason to suppose they will not do so again. Charlotte Church articulated this point particularly well on Question Time last night.

I suspect Cameron thinks that he will take some heat for this in the short term but that with the press on side it is worth it for the dividends he will reap in positive coverage come the next election. I think he is wrong. The public will not easily forget the avalanche of evidence that was presented to Leveson and reported on at the time in intricate detail. The families of Milly Dowler, Madeleine McCann and all the others who were wronged by the press will linger long in the memory.

We know there is a majority in parliament for statute. Labour, the Lib Dems and at least 50 Tory MPs want to see it. The only block to it happening is the man in No 10 because he has the power of initiation for legislation. The buck stops with him.

No politician would relish the idea of being aligned in any way with those who have damaged the lives of victims of crime. Unfortunately for Mr Cameron, whatever his motivations and arguments that is the impression people who pay little attention to politics (i.e. most people) will be left with.

He had the chance to do something to rein in the press and help prevent future abuses. He chose not to. That's all that will matter to many people.

He may just have made the biggest mistake of his political career.

Leveson is linked to Savile but not in the way Paul Dacre thinks

A couple of weeks ago, Mail editor Paul Dacre called for the Leveson inquiry to reopen in order to examine the BBC's role in the Jimmy Savile allegations of child abuse.

This is a rather bizarre request given that it would mean Leveson stepping well outside his original remit. But to be fair to Mr Dacre, he is, in his own way trying to ensure that that aspect of the Savile scandal is investigated thoroughly. It is highly unlikely that Leveson will be reopened though and there are already separate inquiries into what happened at the BBC in terms of both Savile and the Newsnight report that was spiked.

I do think however that the long serving editor has unwittingly highlighted the link that there is between the Savile scandal and the Leveson inquiry.

For months on end we have heard witness after witness testify as to how their lives have been damaged by the use of tabloid dark arts such as phone hacking. The extent of the use of these techniques is truly mind-blowing. From the voice-mail messages of a missing (and as we now know murdered) schoolgirl right through to finding out details of film stars, nobody was safe from having their most intimate details pored over by the hacks and then used in "exposes" or other stories.

Well, I say nobody. Actually there was one person who seems to have been safe from the tabloids' nefarious reach. Jimmy Savile.

Despite the fact that pretty much everyone in the media seems to have been aware of the rumours. Despite the fact that it is now coming to light that numerous of Savile's victims and others who witnessed incidents did try to speak out but were either not believed or laughed at. I doubt there is a single Fleet Street journalist throughout the 1970s and 1980s who had not heard on the grapevine about his alleged activities.

I keep reading and hearing that they couldn't stand the stories up and/or there was nobody to corroborate them. But as we have seen, all it has taken is for a few of his victims to be given the chance to speak out and in the words of Esther Rantzen, an expert on child abuse "they all corroborate each other". And many more have now been given the confidence to speak out as they realise they will likely be believed. If any newspaper had executed a proper investigation into Savile's activities 30 or 40 years ago perhaps his crimes would have been revealed sooner and some of his later victims would have been spared their ordeals.

We of course know that this did not happen. He was free to abuse right up until his death last year and was given a showbiz funeral with the obligatory hagiographic obituary pieces.

So the next time you hear Dacre and others from the tabloid world banging on about how Leveson needs to look into the BBC, just remember that Leveson came about because of the phone hacking scandal and the dark arts the newspapers used to get private information on people for their splashes.   Those same techniques that on occasion are defended in the name of "public interest".

You have to ask why on earth celebrity tittle-tattle was considered a legitimate target for their use and a suspected serial sexual predator like Savile was not.


This post was first published on Liberal Conspiracy.