Could Ken Clarke be an early beneficiary? With the Murdoch empire now tied up with inquiries on both sides of the Atlantic it is hard to see how what has been a huge influence in UK politics continuing to have the same potency. To take one example just look at what’s happened to the justice secretary, Ken Clarke, in the last couple of months as he’s sought to question and bring change to the penal system. Against the background of…
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Why was he so slow off the mark? Now we’ve moved from the the first frenetic stage of the hacking scandal perhaps this might be the moment to reflect on how the main players have handled it and what we’ve seen tells us about their strengths and weaknesses. I thought Numbertwelve summed Cameron up well in this post that was on the previous thread:- “….His main failing, in my view, is an inability to prepare or respond to events until…
Data source – YouGov Why are the views of Mirror readers magnified? Overnight we had the usual YouGov daily poll for News International and this showed Labour, on 43%, with an 8 point lead over the Tories with the Lib Dems on 10%. Over the past thirteen months YouGov has consistently been reporting higher Labour shares than the other firms which generally have the gap between the two main parties much closer. Thus in all but one YouGov poll since…
BBC News
Should he have just stuck to the inquiry process? It was a good PMQs today with Cameron performing substantially better than last week and at last Friday’s press conference. I gave it to the PM by 8 to 7 over Ed Miliband. Where the opposition leader did not get it quite right was when, in his six allocated questions, he sought to move on from the process into attacking Cameron on Coulson. This changed the tone of the occasion and…
Can other attackers expect the same treatment? After a week and half of News International being battered over the hacking allegations the Sun responds furiously this morning to the claims by the former PM, Gordon Brown, that the medical records of his son, Fraser had been hacked into. It writes:“THE Sun today exposes the allegation that we hacked into Gordon Brown’s family medical records as FALSE and a smear. We discovered the ex-PM’s four-year-old son Fraser had cystic fibrosis months…
Guardian Is there now cross-party consensus on hacking? Events in the hacking scandal have moved at a breath-taking pace and this evening the three main party leaders, Cameron/Clegg/Miliband, are meeting to start to hammer out to discuss the terms of reference of the two inquiries into the multiplying scandals. Tomorrow’s debate will be on a Labour motion that “The house believes that it is in the public interest for Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation to withdraw their bid for BSky.”…