Can they make him a proxy for Coulson?

With Speaker Bercow announcing that there’ll be a debate tomorrow on the phone tapping allegations it’s worth noting the interesting take on the affair Telegraph by Labour’s former number director of political operations at Number 10, John McTernan.

He writes: “..The problem is that the attack on Andy Coulson, Cameron’s communications chief and the tabloid’s former editor, is transparently party-political. This is perfectly justifiable in terms of the Westminster game – as the old saying goes, any stigma to beat a dogma. However, the consequence is to make the Met a target. And whenever they’re asked to choose between the cops and the politicians, the public don’t hesitate to support the boys in blue.

The fight the MPs are spoiling for is with Coulson, and through him the PM. But the Met’s policy after “cash for peerages” is to be wary of politicised allegations, unsupported by evidence that would stand up in court. Yates spent most of his appearance before the committee patiently asking for such evidence, while impassioned MPs railed at him to embark on a fishing expedition…”

This, remember, is from a very senior Labour figure.

He’s surely right about which way public sympathies would go if it’s the boys in blue versus MPs.

Will MPs heed his advice? I guess not.

Mike Smithson