IN ALL likelihood in December 2010 David Cameron would have had to search long and hard to find a member of his parliamentary party who did not have strong views about the Murdoch News Corp bid for total control of BSkyB. MPs tend to have views on such matters. And so, when the British prime minister was looking for someone to take over the quasi-judicial role of deciding on the bid following the removal of compromised business secretary, Lib Dem Vince Cable, he was always going to have his work cut out to find someone who could credibly suspend any prejudice.
Instead he gave the job to culture secretary James Hunt, someone so friendly to the Murdoch empire and so passionately committed to the success of the bid that any suspension of prejudice and of contacts, let alone perception of either, would prove hugely difficult. And any credibility to the appointment was finally and decisively washed away by Hunt’s own testimony to the inquiry into press standards and practices by Lord Leveson last week. (News Corp unveiled its bid for BSkyB in June 2010 but abandoned it in July 2011 amid outrage over the phone-hacking scandal at its News of the World newspaper.)
Leveson heard that, just hours ahead of his appointment, Hunt texted News International chairman James Murdoch to congratulate him that the EU commission did not object on competition grounds. Hunt texted: “Great and congrats on Brussels, just Ofcom to go!” After receiving authority over the bid process, he, and particularly his now-fired special adviser Adam Smith, remained in close contact with Murdoch and his PR adviser, receiving one text message on March 3rd, just after he had publicly announced he was “minded” to approve the bid, that said: “Big few days. Well played. JRM.” Two minutes later, Hunt replied: “Thanks think we got right solution!” Hunt admitted that initially he really did not understand his “quasi-judicial” role.
And yet, within hours, Cameron was again expressing full confidence and rejecting Labour demands to refer the issue to Sir Alex Allan, the independent adviser on the ministerial code. Such loyalty to his badly tainted cabinet colleague at this stage is truly remarkable, but perhaps telling about Cameron’s concern that the issue has again cast a critical light on him personally. In the week when his former communications director Andy Coulson, hired from Murdoch’s News International, was charged with perjury in connection with a case also linked to the company and its hacking activities, serious questions have to be asked about the prime minister’s judgment of people and his seeming gullibility.
The Hunt case also casts an uncomfortable light on chancellor George Osborne, by all accounts champion of both Hunt’s and Coulson’s appointments with the prime minister. He has also had a bad week: with a further three U-turns on his last deeply unpopular budget – the Guardian counts 29 in all – the chancellor has set off mounting criticism suggesting the government has none of the Thatcherite mettle that it needs to see off major looming confrontations with public service unions.