Thursday, July 09, 2009

Coulson, McBride and general bollocks

This morning I have finally read the article lots of people are frothing about on Twitter in the Guardian and I must say I think some of the commentary said last night is hilarious. Not funny haha as such, rather funny peculiar because it displays a rather weird intellectual vapidity on some and downright hypocrisy on others.

I'll come to the Guardian articles themselves in a moment, but one of the comments made on Twitter last night by the likes of Tim Ireland was that "logic of Tories running hard on Damian McBride is Coulson will have to go the same way". The basic premise here is two fold, firstly that this Guardian story is somehow equivalent to the McBride story, and secondly that because of that it would be hypocritical if the same level of outrage was not displayed as a result.

Now firstly, I should say as an aside, that to see that argument deployed by someone who only the other day screamed about copyright theft in the use of logos by someone on the Right, whilst remaining utterly silent about copyright theft in the use of logos by someone on the Left, I couldn't help but chuckle to myself at what an immensely dumbass thing it was to do, however I digress.

This morning I actually bought the Guardian to see what the fuss was about. Blazoned across the front page was something about Murdoch, but the picture was of Andy Coulson, former editor of the NotW and now communications supremo for the Tories. The juxtaposition of the headline "Tory PR chief under fire over hacking" too the actualities of the stories was brilliantly done I have to admit.

I also have to admit that I found it quaintly amusing to see the sort of editorial tactics that get hammered when they happen in the Sun or Daily Mail being completely ignored when they're done by the Guardian. Then again, consistency in argument is not something one should expect when there is a "OMFG, evil tories!" type thing going on.

So anyway, I read the Guardian article, page 1 and 2, and then the bigger article inside. It was not until I got to paragraph four of the inside article that it said, "David Cameron's chief press adviser, Andy Coulson, is not named in any of the suppressed evidence." As Andrew Neill correctly pointed out, Coulson was either complicit or incompetent, the problem is, no one has any evidence to prove either.

Interestingly, this is the only point at which this story and the McBride one converge, in that Coulson was the boss and his underlings were doing things that he either knew or didn't know. Likewise, McBride was an underling of Brown, and Brown either knew or didn't, but there is that handy thing called plausible denial covering both.

So, screaming for the head of Coulson, or screaming for the head of Brown, becomes one of pure fantasy conjecture driven by nothing more than ones own political bias and opinion. One thing is for sure though, unlike McBride, there remains no evidence like an email written by Coulson saying "good work lads, keep on breaking the law, love it!", or at least such evidence is not yet forthcoming.

Thus, the question raised by the likes of Sunny Hundal of "what will [right wing bloggers] now say about the allegations levelled at Andy Coulson - David Cameron’s director of communications" doesn't need to be answered as such because the premise of the question is wrong. There have been no actual allegations made against Coulson, rather they've been inferred from bugger all evidence and simple correlation of discrete facts.

Does this make the story a "fuss about nothing"? Absolutely not. The fact that journalists for two major newspapers were employing private investigators to go on fishing expeditions to find stories through illegal means (basically phreaking the PSTN) is definitely serious. Who knew what and when is also an important question, both politically and more importantly legally. This makes it very different to the McBride scandal.

McBride was banged to rights, Coulson isn't (yet). Claiming that it would be hypocritical not to be as outraged at Coulson as one might have been at McBride is at best spurious, and at worst plain stupid. Let's not be under any illusions here, the outrage in both cases from opposing side is driven by political bias. The difference is that one has evidence against the person in question and the other doesn't.

Of course, not proven does not mean innocent, but until there is some proof of Coulson's complicity, the best one can really say is that he must have been incompetent if he really didn't know, but that remains speculation too.

This could yet become a "McBride moment" for Cameron, but right now it isn't.

Update: According to Bob Piper this post is a bit of spin and is "on message" and "if you didn't know better, you would suspect the Tory boys are just trotting out a line".

I confess, it's true, I was woken this morning by Andy Coulson personally and told what to write. I didn't read the story and think "pretty incredible, could become serious for Cameron, but currently nothing more than speculation with no actual evidence against Coulson". I'm just doing the bidding of my paymasters. I have no independent thought, I am merely a propaganda tool don't ya know!

Incidentally, should any Jews from the global conspiracy be reading this, I am available for hire for 30 pieces of silver. I'm also available to push the neocon agenda at the right price. *nudge* *nudge*

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