The resignation of Andy Coulson is probably the biggest blow suffered by David Cameron since becoming Prime Minister. It need not have happened at all.
In appointing Mr Coulson to the powerful position of Tory Director of Communications three and a half years ago, Mr Cameron took an unnecessary risk that many forecast would end in disaster. The outcome inevitably places a question mark against his judgment.
Even if no controversy had surrounded Mr Coulson, it would have been an unwise appointment simply because he was editor of the News of the World for four years. It is a newspaper unlike any others which, while sometimes breaking important stories, employs controversial techniques. In journalistic terms, Mr Coulson was as far the other side of the tracks as it was possible to be.
But he was not just any editor of the News of the World. He had been forced to resign from the newspaper because of evidence of phone-hacking that had taken place during his editorship, and which had led to the prosecution and imprisonment of one of his journalists, royal editor Clive Goodman, and of a private investigator called Glenn Mulcaire, who had collaborated with the paper.
There was – and remains – no proof that Mr Coulson was aware of these illegal practices. He has told the Commons Culture Select Committee that he had no recollection of any phone-tapping during his time as editor of the newspaper. He said that he gave reporters freedom to operate and did not attempt to micromanage every story. Yet the response of many people who know how journalism works was that it was difficult to see how he could not have been aware. It was always possible that evidence would emerge which pointed a finger at the former editor, and a racing certainty that the Tories’ enemies in the media would plug away in the hope of implicating him, and embarrassing Mr Cameron.
Why did the Conservative leader nonetheless go ahead and appoint him a mere six months after his resignation? Mr Coulson is a talented man, and as an editor of a Sunday ‘red-top’ tabloid who had very definitely not been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he offered an understanding of ordinary people’s concerns that was not obviously shared by the privileged Old Etonians and slick marketing men who dominated Mr Cameron’s team.
Mr Cameron was also influenced by Tony Blair’s reliance on Alastair Campbell as his spin doctor from 1994 until 2003. Mr Campbell had a similar background as a rough-and-tumble former ‘red-top’ journalist who shot from the hip.
In fact, Mr Coulson is a much less abrasive and generally more straightforward character, and has shown little appetite for bullying journalists and threatening media organisations in the manner of the divisive Mr Campbell. Nevertheless, his appointment owed much to the New Labour spin doctor having gone before.
A third factor in his appointment – and arguably the most important – was Mr Coulson’s background as a senior executive who had worked for Rupert Murdoch, first as associate editor of The Sun, and then as editor of the News of the World. One of Mr Cameron’s main concerns during 2007 was to secure the support of Mr Murdoch’s newspapers, which had backed New Labour through thick and thin for more than a decade.
Although not particularly close to Mr Murdoch himself, Mr Coulson understood how his organisation worked and had many important contacts within it. The Tory leader’s assiduous courting of various figures in Mr Murdoch’s circle eventually bore fruit. Of course there were many reasons, not least Gordon Brown’s increasing unpopularity, which explained Mr Murdoch’s dumping of Labour at the end of September 2009. But Mr Coulson had played a useful role and Mr Cameron must have thought he had made the right decision by giving him the job.
What he did not foresee was that, after Mr Murdoch had dropped Labour, elements opposed to him on the Left in politics and the media would feel free to launch assaults on the media mogul with a ferocity they had not shown for many years. Mr Coulson had already been an object of their attacks because he was an important Cameron lieutenant.
In the end, Mr Coulson evidently felt weighed down by the media onslaught and has become increasingly disengaged. Two recent developments tipped the balance: the revelation by the News of the World that it was suspending a senior executive, Ian Edmondson, following a ‘serious allegation’ relating to phone-hacking while Andy Coulson was editor of the paper; and an announcement by the Crown Prosecution Service that it will mount a ‘comprehensive’ review of phone-hacking evidence held by the police.
The resignation will inevitably be seen to have been deliberately timed in the immediate aftermath of Alan Johnson standing down as Shadow Chancellor, and on the day that Tony Blair appeared for the second time before the Chilcot Inquiry, in an attempt to lessen media coverage.
I doubt the stratagem will have any effect on the damage that may be suffered by Mr Cameron. His judgment is already called into question. If the Crown Prosecution Service should issue proceedings against Mr Coulson, and if that led to a conviction, the Tory leader would face much more serious criticism.
We have no way of knowing whether this will happen. If no charges are brought, the controversy will slowly fade away, though the whole phone-hacking scandal will continue to be invoked by some who oppose Mr Murdoch’s ambitions for BSkyB.
For Andy Coulson this is a sad end to a brief but on the whole successful foray into political life. His understanding of the concerns of ordinary Tory voters was a factor in Mr Cameron becoming prime minister. He also acted as a counterweight to some of the wilder ideas of Steve Hilton, the Tory leader’s political guru. By the way, Mr Hilton is said to be delighted that his rival has resigned, though Mr Cameron and George Osborne reportedly tried to persuade him not to go.
For David Cameron his resignation is a setback rather than a disaster – so long as his former spin doctor does not end up being convicted in a court of law. The lasting damage that will result from his misjudgment is therefore still unknowable. All we can say with certainty is that this was one appointment which David Cameron need not, and should not, have made.
In quantum mechanics, the spin is the property of a particle rotating around its own axis. In PR, this effect has been used to describe the ability to modify the public perception of an event, a company, a policy or a person. An ability relying, of course on a certain amount of disingenuous messages…
Nothing but the spin... 