Coulson in the spotlight

The Tory spin machine is tonight chugging and puffing away on overdrive as new insights are revealed from journalists working for News of the World former editor, and Tory spin supremo Andy Coulson.

Andy Coulson was employed by David Cameron to be his spin-chief extraordinaire after he resigned from his job, after it became clear that journalists in his office had been hacking into the phones of thousands of celebrities, royals and politicians.

In exploits which make the Draper incident look like shrivelled whitebait, this was organised spying on an industrial scale.

The allegations in the New York Times are so damning that Cameron must now do the honourable thing for the public and the electorate.

This is a major test of judgement for our young and inexperienced Prime Minister. He must fire Coulson.

The NY Times article makes clear that Glenn Mulcaire, a junior journalist at the time, had hacked his way into the messages of the royal princes, the aire-to-throne of England Prince William and his brother Harry. He went to prison, and although Coulson denied all knowledge of it, he subsequently resigned as editor. All along, the line of News International (the newspapers' owner) has been that this was just one bad apple, but the clear evidence is that it was a far more sustained campaign.

Two things remain truly disturbing from the article:

First, the Metropolitan police have failed to pursue the investigations with anything like the full vigour of the law. Despite having evidence that the tapping and hacking may have been far more extensive than Coulson or Mulcaire admit, the police have only investigated further or prosecuted in relation to a tiny proportion of those almost certainly affected.

Second, it seems extraordinary that Coulson is still the prime minister's director of communications. He has admitted that under his watch News International paid police officers for information. For all we know this was a regular habit. The New York Times claims that during his time he freely discussed Mulcaire-style "investigations" with his journalists and that these unlawful news-gathering techniques were pervasive.

This blog finds it hard to believe he didn't know how his scoops were being sourced, and if this is the case he has corrupted himself and the Prime Minister whose judgement on hiring the man must now be in question.

The most worrying aspect of all this is that unless the police take proper action, these illegal practices will carry on. And unless David Cameron sacks Coulson, he will be openly condoning some of the dirtiest politics in Britain.