DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived Cleggeron era

The Guardian's political editor, Patrick Wintour, asks if the PM is saying he had no warning that Coulson had links with a private detective accused of murder (The Telegraph's Peter Oborne and Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger both said he was warned).

I wasn't given any specific information about Andy Coulson ...I don't recall being given any information.

The PM says he is checking and will check whether any of his staff were warned.

this was the follow up, he'd previously said he hadn't heard anything specific

sort of hilariously going the 'but i just didn't happen to know about it!' oblivious route pioneered by rebekah wade

Standard evasion and blame-spread disguised as statesmanship from what I heard.

iirc rusbridger said yesterday that he was one of many who warned cameron.
really if this falls on 'the aide just forgot to tell him' my mind is blown

Cameron is setting himself up for a big fall re: Coulson tho. He's denied knowing, then bottled out and stepped back to not remembering knowing. If it turns out he has to admit to being told, he's going to have to say to the public "somebody said something about Coulson being linked to crooks but it didn't seem like a big deal so i forgot".

So, it hangs on this aide and Clegg.

All Clegg has to do is say "Hell yeah, I told Cameron! ha ha ha"

Cameron also has repeated the canard that "the bulk of this inquiry can only happen when the police investigation has finished. That is what the law requires" - Actually this is totally untrue; the Inquiries Act was passed in 2005 specifically so that politicians nor anyone else could hide behind statements like this

a "could not" in there, waiter!

Don't believe a public inquiry wd be as useful or successful as a proper criminal investigation tbh. The point of inquiries is they report months after the public has stopped giving a shit about what happened in the first place.

So, it hangs on this aide and Clegg.

All Clegg has to do is say "Hell yeah, I told Cameron! ha ha ha"

depends how hard he's pressed here, i think, whether it can just comfortably sit in the swirl of vague apology from DC

The point of inquiries is they report months after the public has stopped giving a shit about what happened in the first place.

p much otm

also fun as this is in a sports sense it reminds me just how little hope there is for a country where politics is a mediated gameshow and it's somehow supposed to matter whether the leader of one party is a corrupt multi-millionaire with a bunch of bent friends and the leader of the opposition is a small-time policy wonk who'd be happier sat in the library all day. personalities, ugh.

The longer he pretends not to have known the worse it gets.

interesting that the second inquiry into the press in general won't be led by a judge or have witnesses on oath. can't imagine what representations dacre has been making to cameron in the last few days.

the leader of the opposition is a small-time policy wonk who'd be happier sat in the library all day

to just ignore the thrust of your post and concentrate exclusively on the personalities involved at the expense of wider issues: i would totally rather bring this side of EM to the fore and have him be a combative, statty fighter - i feel like the kind of general bland straddling of public opinion he shoots for, in tepid statements, contradicts this

xxp

yeah i'm shocked that Cam's dug himself in like this - maybe his own guys are leaving him to dangle a little bit too

xp my point is sort of that EMil is being forced to be the kind of politician that he isn't, partly by "the system" and partly by the wankers infesting the corpse of the Labour party that think they can play the system. but on a wider scale i'm also thinking "when representatives turn to leaders" etc etc

agree

Then again, difficult to feel sorry for someone who deliberately courted power, not least to spite his brother.

i don't feel sorry for him at all, the only way to win is not to play the game

but y'know, beyond that, for fuck's sake don't play a game you're completely rubbish at

yes. I suspect David Miliband (and probably other candidates) would have put the boot in much more effectively.

If the revelations slow down a bit, I wonder if it could delay the summer recess? I only care because the last day is coincidentally when they announce whether they close the RAF base here.

Re EdMill, Wasn't this the classic "let someone inconseq run the party for a while until we look like we might win an election, at which point we'll all throw our hats in" as done in the name of Haig, DunkSmith and Howard?

i don't feel that at all, i'm always mystified by that kinda personal angle on those guys. who cares? even if you feel that warring-siblings angle, i'd imagine most of us are in favour of it being a meritocracy, of there being a diversity of choice, of the significance of a difference between a hardcore new labourite like d-mili & someone else coming along with slightly different priorities. maybe it seems machiavellian that he counselled the guy not to run but- like even in that realm i can't imagine cackling, devious ed plotting his easy walk to victory - i think he probably just did counsel the guy that way at the time. it was symbolic + neat that ed won; he didn't have the same money and wasn't a heir apparent.

watching e-mili get creamed by kirsty on newsnight right now, incidentally.

the meetings between rusbidger/telegraph and cameron's people were all before the election, so it's not like they were seeing clegg so he'd pass the message on, but i think they're supposed to have told clegg the same stuff in a similar meeting.

Good point, forgot that.

But Cameron emplyoed Coulson post election, by which time maybe Clegg might have said something (unless he deliberately forgot...)

the meetings between rusbidger/telegraph and cameron's people were all before the election, so it's not like they were seeing clegg so he'd pass the message on, but i think they're supposed to have told clegg the same stuff in a similar meeting.

rusbridger went through this on newsnight; that he told an aide of cameron, and told clegg, though w/the caveat as above that he wasn't expecting to be involved. KW asked, so did cameron know?, AR: oh yes.

also, y'know, that he wasn't the only guy on fleet street doing so

maybe he did say something? but it's not like he was telling cameron stuff he didn't already know, so i think difficult to blame clegg for this. (although obviously it's his fault that cameron is pm in the first place.)

lol. sucks to be culpable for everything DC does.

it is pretty shocking how totally inept emili has been. this moment in particular has to send a message to the rest of the party: this guy is not right for the job. last night should have been the easiest slamdunk in the world. "look at these guys: the press, david cameron, the tories - they're all in it together"

clegg could have refused to work in a coalition with coulson in downing st. it's one thing to be a party political spinner, another to be official spokesman for the PM. he's implicated.

matt dc otm that clegg is probably quite happy to stay totally silent on this now it's on

it is pretty shocking how totally inept emili has been.

well, it's bad, but it's not shocking

Re EdMill, Wasn't this the classic "let someone inconseq run the party for a while until we look like we might win an election, at which point we'll all throw our hats in" as done in the name of Haig, DunkSmith and Howard?

http://www.greatwardifferent.com/Great_War/British_Front/War%20Illustrated%20Dluxe%20-%20vol%204%20Douglas%20Haig.jpg

yeah one of the few things that the LDs can say with a straight face is that they were never in bed with News International. walk away is the best option

i feel like this is the kind of thing that could be the beginning of the end of a government if labour didn't have e mill as leader.

yeah exactly.

actually i am possibly more shocked by the fact that emili has apparently had a cold for the last four years and never stumped up for some decongestant. even just a little vicks vapo-rub might help.

more on why it's called operation weeting: the other inquiry into payments to police is called operation elveden, after another town in norfolk. who was chief constable of norfolk police before coming to the met? andy hayman, who carried out the first botched investigation into phone hacking and subsequently took a columnist's job at news international. i think there's a message there.

But Cameron emplyoed Coulson post election, by which time maybe Clegg might have said something (unless he deliberately forgot...)

wasn't coulson on cameron's staff during, if not long before, the campaign?

yes

while i'm being fair there are nearly 11 million people who i blame for everything Cameron does before I'd blame Clegg.

EMil certainly isn't gonna help this situation but i think there are other issues that might stop it being the end of a government anyway - too close to last election, vacuum in opposition not wholly down to EMil, LibDems too implicated in the last 12 months to be effective kingmakers at the moment, electorate still confused and shocked by collapse of the economy.

I dunno, like i said before, this is all deckchair-shuffling in the big scheme of things, tho it's always nice to have a chance to burn all the blue deckchairs.

xp worked for him since summer 2007 i think

yeah but PM's official spokesman is a different taxpayer funded job, it's not an automatic transfer.

Anyone see this - not Cameron's statement, fuck that bumwad - I mean the press questions afterwards? Fucking sweet! All his little chuckling jokey asides, which usually work well with such a sympathetic audience, fell embarrassingly flat. He was poking his finger so hard in to the lectern he musta poked a hole in it and he was gulping so much water between questions his bladder must have been the size of a football by the time he waddled off at the end. He found time to shoehorn some little digs at THE LAST LABOUR GOVERNMENT, along the lines of "I might have hired a lying crook against the advice of absolutely everyone, but at least I didn't, uh, start a war or, uh, accept money for tobacco sponsorship (remember that one?)... and this aforesaid lying crook did a really good job, when I was paying him with your money, at least he didn't sex up any dossiers, eh?" This fell flatter than his jokes. What fun!

xp

Yes, what I was saying is that before the election it's reasonable that Clegg wouldn't have passed on a message, but afterwards, you might have though he would.

the leader of the opposition is a small-time policy wonk who'd be happier sat in the library all day

Would probably consider voting for dude if this was actually true. Sigh.

Also, what is it with shitty Labour leaders and them having my name as a nickname to highlight their shitness? Bah.

Met official - "We have arrested a 43 year old man, nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more...if you want any more details you know what to do..."