Wednesday 20 July 2011

Hear no evil…

I promise I'll get back to mundane nonsense soon, but the Murdoch story just keeps on giving.

The big story yesterday was confirmation from the two senior policemen giving evidence that Ed Llewellyn,  the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff, explicitly told them not to inform David Cameron what was going on - despite employing the News of the World editor who had to resign because of the phone hacking scandal.

This is a disgrace. This is the Prime Minister of a country deliberately isolating himself from the certain knowledge of criminality as a subterfuge. The Chief of Staff has to resign, and I'm sure that when he does, he'll say he was acting alone to protect the PM. It won't wash. An apparatchik doesn't behave like that unless he's damn sure that it's what the boss wants.

It reminds me of a mafia boss covering his ears while taking the payments from his underlings. It's deniability, but it isn't plausible deniability. It's personal survival taking precedence over political and moral responsibility.

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