The allegations surrounding the 'News of the World' phone tapping of celebrities claimed David Cameron's communications chief. He is unlikely to be the last casualty, writes MARK HENNESSY
IN LATE 2005, the News of the Worldpublished a story about Prince William that had information known only to a handful of people. In January 2007, the paper's royal correspondent Clive Goodman and a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, were jailed after pleading guilty to hacking messages left on mobile telephones.
On the day of the convictions, Andy Coulson resigned as the paper’s editor. Six months later he joined Conservative party leader David Cameron’s team in Westminster as communications director, where he did an able job and played a key role in ensuring that the party’s “blue bloods” kept in touch with the thinking and attitudes of the British public.
However, the toxic legacy left by Coulson’s time at the helm at the tabloid Sunday newspaper remained.
A Scotland Yard inquiry ran into the sand, with allegations that the police had not done enough to properly investigate the allegations that the Goodman-Mulcaire duo were not rogue operators, that they had followed newspaper policy to win advantage in the ceaseless battle for circulation.
Since then, Cameron had stood loyally by Coulson, who had become a key part of his inner circle and his top communications chief.
Coulson, meanwhile, continued to deny that he had knowledge of the illegal conduct of his underlings at the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid.
Last May the New York Times reported former News of the Worldjournalist Sean Hoare's allegations that Coulson had encouraged him to hack. However, Murdoch's News International alleged that the New York Times was using the affair to attack Murdoch over his decision to put the Wall Street Journal in direct competition with it.
The allegations continued. In October Channel 4's Dispatches reported the charges from another News of the Worldjournalist that Coulson had listened to the tapes of illegally procured voicemails, while in December the paper's news editor, Ian Edmundson, was suspended after an internal investigation.
Coulson was still protesting his innocence yesterday but said he would leave Downing Street in the coming weeks because the controversy was consuming too much of his time and diverting him from his job – one which even his enemies say he worked tirelessly and well at. However, his departure, which Downing Street knew about in December, will not bring the controversy to an end.
The crown prosecution service is now reading through the file produced by Scotland Yard’s investigators to see if more needs to be done, even though it said in December that no charges would be brought.
All the while, new figures come forward – including Irish jockey Kieren Fallon – to claim that their private messages were tapped by the paper.
Meanwhile, Coulson swore under oath in a Glasgow court that he had not been involved.
Cameron’s loyalty to Coulson raises questions about his own judgment. This will be ruthlessly exploited by Labour, partly in vengeance for the attacks it suffered from the Conservatives during the Blair-Brown years when news management was practised, brutally at times, by Alastair Campbell and others in the upper ranks of the Labour machine.