In case you missed them, these were the best read pieces on Uncut in the last seven days:
Atul Hatwal presents the shadow cabinet goal of the month competition
Dan Hodges thinks blue Labour needs a spinner
Tom Watson says Rebekah Brooks should resign
Michael Dugher reports back from Leicester South
Stella Creasy says private debt is this government’s public injustice
Nick Keehan reports on Cameron’s immigration speech
Sunder Katwala says Nick Cohen is wrong on religion
by Tom Watson
Part of me wants to scoff at the idiocy of the people who are paid staggering amounts of money to represent the interests of Rupert Murdoch. My God they’ve let him down. Then I think of the parents of the Soham kids and remember why the campaign cannot stop. And I think of my own children. My gentle, beautiful boy, frightened by the nasty man at the door during the Damian McBride affair. And I remember my sense of helplessness, when I couldn’t keep him, his mum and sister safe, even in our home. It took me to the brink – but that’s another story.
In the autumn of the media patriarch, Mr Murdoch’s love of his own children is the one touching piece of a drama, played out over years and decades, that has pulverised careers, relationships and lives.
I’ve read with a sense of sympathy how Mr Murdoch’s daughter has been financially endowed after her TV company was purchased by News Corp. James Murdoch, schooled at Harvard but not in life, shipped off to New York before the court at the palace of Wapping disintegrates. This is a father getting his house in order before time takes its inevitable toll on one of the most remarkable figures of the last half century. It’s touching. It’s sad. I admire him for it, but it doesn’t take away the scandal. (more…)
Andy Coulson has now resigned from two massive jobs for something he says he knew nothing about.
On 23 November, Tom Watson predicted on Uncut that Andy Coulson would resign “within the next few weeks”. In the end, it was eight weeks. They moved the date back in response to Watson’s article.
On 12 January, Watson revealed on Uncut that the working date within Downing Street for Coulson’s departure was now 25 January. He has resigned on 21 January. The opportunity of a Friday combining Blair at the Chilcot enquiry with the aftermath of the Johnson resignation all but obliged them to bring it forward by the width of a weekend.
And Rupert Murdoch is due to be in London next week. He is sick of the scandal swirling more and more distastefully around his (distasteful) family business. He believes that it has been mishandled by his minions. Did he send word that the Coulson embarrassment (the only easy bit to fix) should be cleared up before he arrives?
Many people – including the prime minister’s official spokesman, on the record – dismissed Tom Watson’s intelligence as rubbish. It was not. Watson was telling the truth; Cameron and his people were brazenly lying.
Coulson’s official spokesman, Nick Robinson of the BBC, has said – as has most of the rest of the Lobby – that the worst damage this will do David Cameron is to deprive him of Andy Coulson’s expertise. (more…)
