How dangerous is this for Cameron?
Can Tory PR boss Coulson survive?
The big breaking political story overnight is the Guardian splash revelations that “Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists’ repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.”
This could have big consequences for David Cameron because, as the story states, his PR chief, Andy Coulson, was deputy editor and then editor of the News of the World “when, the suppressed evidence shows, journalists for whom he was responsible were engaging in hundreds of apparently illegal acts”.
One of PB’s normally well informed contributors about media matters, Don, posted this just over an hour ago on the previous thread.
Coulson will most likley step down on Friday saying that he did not know about the alleged activity but he did not want to harm DC or The Conservatives as he had become the story.
Then DC will turn the story around onto the alleged cover up by the authorities. The strategy is most likley being developed tonight.
I suspect the replacement is already lined up, and has been in case Coulson was targeted like this.
Whether Don is right or not we’ll have to see but there’s little doubt that this could be highly dangerous for the Tory leader – just at a time when he was seeking to make “character” and “honesty” into campaign issues.