29 Apr 2012

No Grand Bargain with Murdoch; Hunt on probation

David Cameron introduced the notion of a grand bargain with Rupert Murdoch into the Andrew Marr interview himself.

It is a very serious and possibly lethal allegation that policy positions held by the Conservatives in opposition (though often frustrated in power because of the Coalition with the Lib Dems) were adopted in order to win favour with Rupert Murdoch et al.

You know things are bad when the PM has to come out mentioning this level of serious misdemeanour in order to try to clear the air.

The clinching proof that there was no “grand bargain”or as he put it “big deal or big agreement” between the Tories and the Murdoch Empire, David Cameron said, is that Vince Cable, a critic of Murdoch, was appointed Business Secretary. (You might think that was a product of David Cameron not winning outright majority and having to go into Coalition.)

As for Jeremy Hunt, the PM signalled that he would refer the culture secretary to Alex Allen for separate investigation if the Leveson process suggests there was a breach of the ministerial code.

If he was watching Marr, I suspect Lord Justice Leveson spluttered on his toast as David Cameron said “I don’t believe there is any better process” than Leveson for finding out if Jeremy Hunt deserves to be referred for investigation for a breach of the ministerial code.

Was Lord Justice Leveson banging the breakfast table with a gavel at this point saying: “What part of my statement saying: ‘I don’t want to extend my terms of reference’ don’t you understand?” We will never know.

At one point, David Cameron said he’d tried to get a “better distance” with the media in his premiership – a reference perhaps to the unannounced abolition of monthly press conferences, recommended by his first Communications Chief Andy Coulson, and a marked reduction in the number of tv interviews granted.

 Anyway, this particular interview probably didn’t harm him politically, as my guess is quite a few viewers will think he was genuine when he said his Murdoch connections were ill-judged but not improper.

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