A NOTHER RESIGNATION. And like Brian Cowen’s, there was, in Andy Coulson’s departure on Friday as Downing Street spin-doctor, both that same sense of inevitability, of a resignation long coming, and the same insistence that he had done nothing wrong. It was, both men argued, simply impossible to do the job any more because of the distraction.
"I stand by what I've said about those events [telephone eavesdropping by the News of the World( NoW)]," Coulson insisted, "but when the spokesman needs a spokesman it's time to move on" . He may move on, but the issues won't, not least in respect of his own implausible denials of knowledge of potentially thousands of illegal telephone hacks by the NoWunder his editorship, in questions about police reluctance to investigate the story, and in prime minister David Cameron's judgment in appointing him in the first place.
The spate of revelations about the scope of the NoWoperation is also casting a pall over the hopes of owner Rupert Murdoch and News Corp that government will clear its $12 billion buyout of pay TV operator BSkyB.
The final straw for Coulson was almost certainly the evidence which emerged after Christmas out of a civil action by actress Sienna Miller that implicated assistant editor Ian Edmondson, now suspended by the paper. Much more is also coming down the tracks in 11 pending suits against private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, whose diaries list thousands of potential targets. With royal reporter Clive Goodman, he has already served time for hacking into Prince William’s aides’ voicemail. Coulson must also have been worried by rumours that Edmondson is about to “turn”.
Coulson resigned as NoWeditor after Goodman and Mulcaire were jailed in 2007, accepting "ultimate responsibility" but denying any knowledge of their activities. But that an editor would not be familiar with the source of major exclusives, is simply not credible.
His resignation is likely finally to scuttle the News Corp “single rogue reporter” defence (although media pundit Roy Greenslade warns of the emergence, post-Edmondson, of an equally laughable “two rogues” strategy). The group, which has already paid out hundreds of thousands of pounds in hush money to early litigants like former boss of the Professional Footballers’ Association Gordon Taylor and agent Max Clifford, would do better now to ’fess up and begin to put the scandal and culture which bred it behind it. News Corp would not be well-advised to give Coulson another job.