Let our leaders have their holidays in peace

The chillax crisis: Cameron is perfectly capable of picking up a phone - these are just the politics of envy

 

How was your bank holiday weekend? Hours in traffic jams? Soaking up the sun in the garden? A last-minute getaway to the Continent? Or were you stuck in the office?

And today? Are you back at work or slowly getting used to being with the family over half-term?

If the latter is the case, then good for you. You clearly have your work-life balance sussed. And that, as  the press frequently tells us through social surveys, pseudo-scientific research and opinion columns, is essential. Not only for our own well-being, but for business and the country as a whole.

What hypocrisy!

Our newspapers are brilliant at prescribing desirable approaches to work, health and homelife - but they are scathing should any leader in any sphere follow such advice. (Just as they pontificate about business practices that they wouldn't dream of adopting themselves.)

It is unlikely that any national newspaper editor was in the office on Sunday to oversee the production of yesterday morning's papers. Yet we can be sure that there will have been a series of telephone calls through the day to monitor progress - with the duty editor before morning conference, update chats with the newsdesk, discussions about picture choices through the afternoon, thoughts about the splash heading come the evening. They may even have been looking at the paper through a remote online connection and be emailing thoughts about every page as it developed.

See, it's quite simple these days to run the show from a distance. Unless, it seems, you happen to be the Prime Minister. In which case you clearly have no access to telephone, internet, homing pigeon or cleft stick.

Journalists have to work on bank holidays - even, thanks to Rupert Murdoch and the Wapping revolution, on Christmas Day. It is not a popular shift. Maybe this has something to do with newspapers' churlishness when anyone in the public eye dares to imagine that they are off duty.

The paparazzi were ahead of this game and Diana, of course, was the universal target. OK, she knew she would be snapped when she was walking out from the Chelsea Harbour Club, bottle of water in one hand, mobile and keys in the other. But as a mother, she didn't want the young princes harassed and so in a desperate attempt to earn some privacy,  the Waleses made a pact with the devil in the 80s.  The family would pose for photographs at the start of their holiday if they could then be left alone.

Seemed like a good idea at the time.

It wasn't. It just established an awful tradition.  Before too long, politicians were also submitting to the First Day of the Holidays photocall. Yet the paps kept snooping with their long lenses and found that they now had a  market not only for a topless princess, but also for unflattering pictures of Cherie Blair's backside.

The Blairs in Tuscany. Photograph Daily Mail

Tony's penchant for exotic freebies brought the next development: the annual vox pop on where MPs were to spend their summer holidays. While the rest of us browsed through package tour brochures or planned the usual camping trip to Norfolk, ministerial aides would be poring over maps to find a destination that would send the right message. Never mind 'getting away from it all with the family', the holiday decision had become a political statement. And it was always wrong. (Unless you were Margaret Beckett, who was first teased, but later applauded for sticking with her caravan.)

In 2008 Gordon Brown and his family went to Southwold for a couple of weeks. They strolled on the beach, did the maize maze and visited Dingly Dell Pork. But it didn't really seem Gordon's kind of thing - perhaps the business suit  was the giveaway. We later learned from Andrew Rawnsley's biography that the holiday had been Sarah's idea,  to show that our dour man-of-the-Manse prime minister was in touch with Middle England - which he wasn't.

Brown chilling on Southwold beach. Photograph: Daily Telegraph

By now the holiday charabanc was veering out of control and we poor readers have been subjected to a bronzed Putin riding bareback, Nicolas and Carla frolicking on the shoreline and Angela Merkel  hill-walking. We have also, incidentally, seen the designs all these people choose for their Christmas cards.

Do we need to know any of this stuff? Isn't it time to give the people who run the world a break? Still you have to admire the chutzpah: in March the Telegraph ran a couple of photographs of Frau Merkel in her bathing suit with an accompanying story that read

Mrs Merkel was caught by the cameras as she had a private dip while holidaying with her husband at Hotel Miramare on the island famous for its thermal baths off the coast of Naples.

Yes, very private. Funny how often such pictures have captions that say the victim is 'enjoying a private moment..'

The headline and blurb on the web version of the story had a familiar ring:

Angela Merkel fails to escape eurozone crisis on Italian holiday 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel may have donned her bathing costume for a little relaxation on the Italian island of Ischia, but she has failed to escape the heat of the current eurozone crisis.

It is an immutable law of journalism that if a politician dares to go on holiday, they will be leaving behind a crisis. It also follows that there will be someone, somewhere willing to say that they should be back in the office, overseeing everything.

And so to Dave. Whatever you think of him as a prime minister, he hasn't had much luck with his holidays. He's constantly mocked for being an out-of-touch toff,  but then we jeer when he queues for a Ryanair flight.

His holiday wardrobe is scrutinised and his liking for navy blue T-shirts dissected - along, of course with Sam's outfits. Where would we have been if the Mail hadn't been on hand in Cornwall last August to tell us: 

The Prime Minister's wife wore a coat to keep warm as the sun failed to make an appearance for the August bank holiday 

Yesterday the paper's fashion focus was on footwear - Dave got it right for once with his flipflops while Sam chose strappy sandals over the white Birkenstocks she wore when they were in Ibiza a couple of years back. But the sartorial appraisals were a sideshow. The main issue was should the Prime Minister be in Ibiza at all, given the terrorism crisis - there's that word again - at home.

One person had no doubt on that one:

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With UK on terror alert, Cameron off on holiday in Ibiza. Unbelievable.
— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) May 25, 2013

The Sun took a similar view in its splash:

David Cameron sips coffee on a carefree holiday in Ibiza - while back home the grieving family of soldier Lee Rigby visits his murder scene. 
The PM and wife sam relaxed at a beach-front bar on the Spanish isle yesterday.
In stark contrast, Lee's estranged wife Rebecca - mother of his two year old son Jack - wept as she clutched a Peppa Pig cuddly toy with a t-shirt proclaiming: 'Daddy's little buddy.'

The report goes on to quote one Labour MP - John Mann - and a couple of tweeters saying how outrageous it was that Cameron was not at work.

Melissa Kite went further on the Guardian website with a piece headlined 

David Cameron's relaxation may be his downfall 

The prime minister's sunshine holiday at a time of national crisis can only add to the Tory right's simmering resentment 

While one does not want to be begrudging, or insinuate that the PM does not deserve downtime, it is only stating facts to point out that not having had a holiday since Christmas is not exactly the definition of hardship these days...
But let us assume it is unfair to attack the prime minister for being out of touch because he can afford to take a family of five on a half-term foreign break. What really niggles is the rest of their explanation. It was all right for the PM to go on holiday days after Lee Rigby was murdered, the aides argued, because Cameron "had urged everyone to carry on as normal". 
To my mind, there is something vaguely distasteful about this. Downing Street should not be trying to make a virtue of a trip that really has nothing to recommend it apart from personal enjoyment. A still more potent puzzler is why Cameron is able to chill out on a beach this week. It seems that no matter what happens, be it European Union revolts or terror attacks, the briefing from No 10 is always the same: "The prime minister is relaxed."

 So we don't want a Prime Minister who is able to relax? Much better to have someone who is a bundle of nerves and can't sleep for worrying about the economy, Europe, gay marriage, let along the thought of a new terrorist threat?

In common with the Sun and the Mirror, the Telegraph splashed on Cameron being under fire - but from a different angle: for prematurely visiting MI5 to praise spies for their efforts, though it linked Woolwich and Ibiza for its front page illustration. 

The Times, Express and Independent all reported that the Camerons were on holiday, that Dave was still 'in charge', and all carried the obligatory note of disdain from at least one Labour MP. John Mann found voice in the Mail, Sun, Times and Telegraph, while Sarah Champion had her say in the Mail and Express. 

The one person quoted in every paper was Nadine Dorries, the 'celebrity' Tory who has recently been allowed back in from the jungle. It was ridiculous to condemn the Prime Minister for taking time off, she said. "I actually want him to be refreshed. We have got the internet, we've got mobile phones. I think he is entitled to a holiday.' 

It comes to something when Nadine Dorries shines out as a beacon of common sense. 

For heaven's sake. David Cameron is the father of three young children. When they are on holiday from school, they need him to be around as much as possible. As a former colleague tweeted at the weekend: 

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@david_cameron is prime minister pro tem but husband and father for ever. We can manage without him for a few days
— Richard Dixon (@Linguagroover) May 26, 2013

Spot on there, Richard. On both counts. 

I want to know that there are people in control of the country. And I feel happier to know that the top man is away but contactable than I am seeing the likes of John Prescott and Peter Mandelson rushing around shouting 'I'm in charge' like Bruce Forsyth.

I do not need to know where the Prime Minister takes his family on holiday - unless it is in Assad's palace or on Patpong road. Nor do I care how many ministers are reluctantly supporting the British tourist industry. And I certainly don't need to see pictures, whether papped or posed. 

Just give us all a break.

@gameoldgirl

SubScribe

Leveson: an expensive hiding to nothing

The Joneses are thousands of pounds in debt. The children need new school uniforms, there isn't enough cash to pay the woman who comes to look after their ageing grandmother, and the car has failed its MoT. Most of the neighbours are in the same boat. Times are tough.
In the living room there is a television set. It's not brilliant - the picture and sound quality are a bit iffy - but it's just about done the job for the past few years. Even with all the other pressing demands on their bank accounts, the family is thinking about replacing it, so Mrs Jones decides to commission a personal shopper to find a new one.
She wants an independent opinion, so she doesn't approach anyone with any background in making or selling televisions. Having chosen the  man for the job, the family asks him to look into DVDs and home cinemas while he's at it. He should conduct his research as widely and thoroughly as possible - but even when he reaches his conclusions, the Joneses may ignore his advice. Everyone thinks it's a great idea.

Well it's obviously utterly bonkers. Money down the drain.
But here we have a Government up to its ears in debt, austerity all round, limited funds for education, health or transport and the swirling crisis in Europe threatening to make things worse.

Yet we're happy to spend anything up to £50m - enough to rebuild five delapidated secondary schools - on trying to put a leash around the country's most important watchdog: the Press. And incidentally allow everyone to join in the fun of the official hounding of Rupert Murdoch.

The News of the World should not have hacked into anybody's phone.
But when people found out that it had done so, no one really cared. There wasn't even much outrage when it turned out that it was Prince William's phone that had been tapped.
When the Guardian suggested that many more people had had their calls intercepted, the claims were treated with disbelief and brushed aside. But the newspaper was dogged in its pursuit of the story and eventually the wider truth emerged.  The former head of the Professional Footballers' Association  was paid a huge sum in compensation after he threatened to sue for intrusion - a sum that was assumed to have included 'hush money', or to put it more formally, a confidentiality clause; common practice in cases settled out of court.
A procession of celebrities came forward to say that they, too, had suffered invasions of their privacy - but  there were still few people beyond the Guardian offices who cared much. Millions of readers continued to buy the redtops without questioning where all the showbiz gossip came from.  Until the parents of Milly Dowler said that her voicemails had been erased, giving them false hope that she was still alive when in fact she was long dead.
Suddenly everyone was overcome with righteousness. The police belatedly swung into action, and promptly went into overdrive. The News of the World was closed down. People started asking questions about the Prime Minister's judgment in appointing a former editor of the paper as his communications chief. Resignations and arrests followed.
When you have a furore such as this, it doesn't take long for someone (usually Her Majesty's loyal Opposition)  to cry 'There must be a full public inquiry.' And so it came to pass that Lord Justice Leveson was charged with examining the culture and ethics of the Press, the relationship between the Press and the police, and the relationship of the Press and politicians.  He has further been asked to come up with a new regulatory system to replace the Press Complaints Commission.

We are obsessed with public inquiries, royal commissions and judicial reviews and we never learn: they rarely reveal much that we didn't know already and even less frequently bring about effective change.
In 1981 Lord Scarman conducted an inquiry into the causes of the Brixton riots and concluded that relations between the police and the community - particularly the black community - had broken down and needed a fundamental rethink. As a result of his report, the independent Police Complaints Authority was set up.
Eighteen years later Sir William Macpherson was asked to examine the way the police had investigated the murder of Stephen Lawrence. The inquiry cost £4m and Sir William concluded that the Metropolitan Police were institutionally racist and that relations with the community had broken down. So much for Scarman.

In 1973 the Daily Mirror published an unprecedented 'shock issue' on the life and death of Maria Colwell. I can visualise it to this day. Maria was given up to foster parents as a baby and lived with them until she was five. Then her mother decided she wanted her back. The child was abused and starved until one day her mother's boyfriend came home and found Maria watching television. Her punishment was to be battered and kicked to death. She was six years old.  William Kepple was jailed for eight years for manslaughter, a sentence reduced to four on appeal.
The case appalled the nation and Sir Thomas Field-Fisher led a public inquiry that brought some changes in the law.  The inquiry revealed a pattern of events that is now all too familiar: care professionals incapable of joined-up thinking, social workers being fobbed off by parents who could get a degree in lying, doctors and nurses not being alert  to suspicious bruising and broken bones.
We know what happens not just from the fate of Maria Colwell, but from the inquiries into the deaths of Jasmine Beckford, Tyra Henry, Victoria Climbie, Baby P. But have these investigations taught us how to save such children? Sadly not. What we have learnt is to blame overstretched social services officials when the real villains are the bastards who kill the children. And we gasp in astonishment when one dares to fight back, as Sharon Shoesmith did after being publicly tried and convicted by Ed Balls before a word had been given in evidence.

Some inquiries do produce radical change - there was a huge overhaul of Underground safety as a result of Desmond Fennell's inquiry into the Kings Cross fire that killed 31 people in 1987. The Taylor report on the Hillsborough disaster brought an end to standing on terraces at football grounds, but many thought his conclusions flawed and other recommendations went unheeded.
Other hearings have seemed pointless. The Saville inquiry spent 12 years and £195m going into minute detail of the Bloody Sunday killings in Londonderry in 1973. At the beginning we knew that the Paras had opened fire on unarmed protesters, killing 26. At the end we knew that Paras had fired on unarmed protesters, killing 26 - and that Martin McGuinness had, as suspected, been one of the "bad guys" of the Troubles.. Nearly £8m per victim is a lot to pay for 'closure'. 
The Franks inquiry into the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands told us that the Foreign Office had taken its eyes off the ball. Peter Carrington had drawn that conclusion in the opening days of the conflict and resigned as Foreign Secretary, taking responsibility for others' failings on his watch - something that rarely happens these days.  But I guess if the country has to go to war because someone ballsed up, perhaps we should look into it. As we did with Chilcot and Hutton: £7.5m worth of investigations into the Blair Government's approach to the Iraq escapade and we're still arguing about it a decade later. Can anyone remember what their lordships decided?
Whatever an inquiry chairman concludes, there will always be people queueing up to denounce the verdict, and if the Government doesn't like it or the public purse can't stretch to the recommended reforms, nothing much will change. In too many cases, inquiries produce only the public vilification of someone who made a catastrophic mistake while doing their job and who will have to deal with the guilt, remorse and 'if onlys' for the rest of their lives, long after everyone else has forgotten their name.

And so to phone hacking. Rupert Murdoch has been a pantomime villain since he first  stepped foot in Fleet Street (ok, technically it was Bouverie Street) in the Sixties with his purchase of the News of the World. We  booed as he bought and reinvented the Sun, complete with page 3 girls. We yelled 'oh no you won't' when he wanted to buy Times Newspapers, but oh yes, he did. We hissed about cross-media ownership when he set up Sky. We cried 'foul' as he took over the Today newspaper when no one else wanted it. And, most of all, we shouted and stamped our feet when he sacked 5,000 print workers and started producing papers the way he wanted to in Wapping. 
Many have suffered at his hands, but rivals who denounce him have had few qualms about following where he led. How many national newspapers are today produced using hot metal, old fashioned printers and typesetters? How many millions watch complete football matches on TV, rather than 45 minutes of edited highlights of one game on a Saturday night? 
Well we have now reached the scene where the villain is tied up against the stake for his show trial with everyone relishing his discomfort. 
We're also rubbing our hands with glee to see his red-haired sidekick in manacles. We never liked her much - she was too smart and glamorous by half - and she didn't do herself any favours when she cast hundreds of her crew adrift while trying to cling to her personal lifeboat. We lap up the stories of Rebekah's police horse, Rebekah and Dave's country suppers. 
But is this a legitimate way to spend public money? Especially as the chances are that the next scene will begin 'with one bound he was free'. 

Lord Justice Leveson and Robert Jay QC are a fantastic double act; their show one of the most entertaining things on television. And my goodness, they've had some great guest stars: every national newspaper editor, every proprietor, government ministers PLUS three former prime ministers, the leader of the Opposition, the Deputy Prime Minister and today the Prime Minister himself. Wowee! What a show! How we love to see the posh boys squirm.
The only trouble is, Leveson has an impossible task: to create a new regime to regulate the Press, ie newspapers. 
But what is a newspaper? Something that runs a little paragraph on the front or back paqe saying  'printed and published by...registered as a newspaper at the Post Office'? What if you don't register? What if you don't appear in print? The Guardian has stated that it sees its future in digital only. Would it be subject to any new regulation? The UK Press Gazette now appears as a weekly magazine online; is it part of "the Press"? Is this blog? What about review sites?  Leveson has conceded that the Internet is the 'elephant in the room'. He can't control the web, but if that's the only platform on which you publish your journalism, are you bound by the rules that govern your newsprint rivals? 

Doctors who can kill us are allowed to police themselves, but the Press can't be trusted. Nor, it seems, can the upholders of the law. Everything untoward that the News of the World folk are accused of doing is covered by existing legislation, as Ian Hislop kept telling the inquiry during his joyous morning of evidence. His point is proved by the fact that two people went to jail over Prince William's voicemail. We now have 150 coppers scurrying round investigating what went on in Wapping, arresting journalists all over the place and running up a bill which UKPG reported today is likely to end up at £30m-plus.
As a matter of interest, the Milly Dowler investigation, 'Operation Ruby', involved 100 officers and cost £6m - and still failed to nail the killer. Levi Bellfield was linked to the case only after he was arrested on another matter. Compare the spending and consider which is more important, finding a child killer or finding out who listened into Sadie Frost's phone calls?

And what about the rest of Fleet Street? Nobody's looking at them, we're all so engrossed in Murdoch. It would be naive to think that these practices were confined to News International and fingers have been pointed at the Mirror and the Mail groups, but there has been no real scrutiny.
Only today the CPS announced that it would not be prosecuting David Leigh, the Guardian's investigations executive editor, for hacking the phone of an arms company executive. Leigh not only admitted in print that he had listened to the businessman's voicemail but said that doing so had given him a 'voyeuristic thrill'. A prosecution would not be in the public interest, the CPS said. 
The Telegraph may be whiter than white - or maybe it has immunity because of the MPs' expenses. That was, of course, a case of dealing in stolen goods. The Times rejected the tapes for that very reason, a decision that displeased Murdoch, as we heard during his two days of evidence to Leveson. Stolen goods or not, it quickly became clear that the Telegraph was right to take the chance, the disclosures were without a doubt in the public interest. What, then, if you hack into a phone and find that a government minister is selling secrets to China? Is it suddenly OK? Oh, the benefits of hindsight.

Leveson knows he's on a hiding to nothing on the ethics/regulation front: he outlined his vague thinking to Tony Blair and pretty well begged him to turn it into something workable.He seems to be leaning towards statutory control. Wrong decision. The Tories won't buy it and his report will end up on the bottom shelf. Better just to reform the existing self-regulation system and give the PCC or its successor the power to fine newspapers or suspend journalists whose behaviour is dodgy but still just about legal. The existing laws can do the rest.

So how about relations with the police? It is already an offence to pay a public official; do we need further laws? Bribery legislation that came into effect last year is causing enough problems for businesses that don't know whether a bottle of scotch at Christmas or a ticket to the Olympics opening ceremony are allowable any more. The police need the Press's help with appeals to find criminals; reporters need police contacts to get the inside story. Are they allowed to buy each other a drink? How do you set the parameters? Two glasses good, four glasses bad? Read Orwell and you'll see that things do not always pan out quite as you had hoped.

Then there are the politicians. Just like the police, they need the Press. They also need the support of business, unions, ordinary people. Where do you draw the line? A woman goes to her  MP's surgery to complain about the rubbish collections or to seek help with an official letter. He obliges by raising the issue in Parliament or untangling the red tape. Fine?
A film director goes to a reception at No 10 and chats about the prospects for tax breaks to help the British film industry. Is that all right? 
Diageo tells the Chancellor that increases in alcohol duty are leading to a surge in booze cruises and making Britain uncompetitive. Is that above board?
The CBI lobbies the Tories for reductions in corporation tax; the unions tell Labour to change employment law. We take that for granted.
Why then, is it so terrible for newspapers - and not just the Murdoch Press - to put their agendas to ministers who may seek their endorsement come election time?
Rebekah and Dave may have been too cosy; Tony and Rupert may have been too close. But the door to No 10 wasn't closed to every other newspaper proprietor and editor. There was a time that Paul Dacre seemed to be running the country.
This inquiry is supposed to be about the whole of the Press, but the focus is squarely on Murdoch. Vince Cable was rightly stripped of his powers to decide on whether the BSkyB deal should be nodded through or examined more closely. Declaring war on Murdoch didn't exactly build confidence in his ability to deliver an impartial decision. We now know that his replacement, Jeremy Hunt, was too friendly with the Murdoch team and didn't even understand what was meant by quasi-judicial. Whatever either of them ended up deciding wouldn't have made a jot of difference to what was broadcast since News Corp already controlled the network.  

The Leveson inquiry has so far cost £2m, and it has a way yet to run. Is it worth it? 
Not if you listen to two people who should know. Two years ago Lord Bichard said in a debate at Gresham College, Oxford, that public inquiries were a waste of money because they had so little impact. Lord Bichard was put in charge of an inquiry into child protection issues after the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham. It ended up costing about £10m, but he said that he had to nag politicians to take any notice of his recommendations. "I regret that there seems to be a remarkable reluctance to adapt to the changes identified by these inquiries in so many professions," he said.
Lady Justice Smith, who ran the £21m inquiry into the Harold Shipman murders, felt much the same. "Positive proposals can be very slow to emerge and even if they eventually do, they are often diluted," she said. "It's a source of great regret to me."


The phone hacking scandal and belated police investigation have clipped Murdoch's wings and forced him into changes - as well as costing his company more than $100m. His son has lost all hope of inheriting his mantle; a newspaper with a long history and unique reputation has been killed off; trusted lieutenants have had to resign and some could even face jail.
All of that happened or was in train before Leveson started. It seems to me that this is ample evidence that mechanisms exist to deal with wrongdoing within the industry. It was exposed by industry - the Guardian - and dealt with by the existing forces of the law and commercial imperatives.As Hislop says, we just need to use the powers we already have a bit more efficiently.
The inquiry may have started as a 'get Rupert' witch-hunt, but it is David Cameron, with his lapses of judgment on Coulson, Brooks and Hunt, who may rue the day he set it up.



And so, as we close another week of celebrity evidence, here are a couple of final observations:

1: About 200 News of the World journalists lost their jobs when the paper closed. Many were re-employed at the Sun. In the fallout more than a hundred Times and Sunday Times workers also lost their jobs. One explanation was that the company had taken on premises at Thomas More Square in the expectation that four newspapers would share the costs; when there were only three, it was time for belt-tightening all round.
Murdoch told Leveson that he should have closed the NoW years ago and replaced it with a Sunday edition of the Sun. So even as he stands lashed to the stake, he still comes out with one result he always wanted.

2: One of the prime anti-NI cheerleaders is Tom Watson, a Labour MP and member of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. He regards the behaviour of Murdoch and his staff as beyond the pale. He may well be right, but what of his own behaviour?
When details of MPs' expenses were published in full after the Telegraph blew the issue wide open with tales of duck houses and 30p plugs charged to the taxpayer, it emerged that Mr Watson and fellow MP Iain Wright had spent £100,000 of our money on the purchase and furnishing of a Westminster flat. Unfortunately, they were unable to claim the cost of their dining room suite because it went over the allowance. But Mr Watson did charge the full £4,800 a year for feeding himself - and the pair also used our money to buy the freehold of the flat. That will have made it more valuable, but Mr Watson and Mr Wright will be perfectly entitled to keep any profit they make on a future sale. 
Very ethical. Perhaps there should be a public inquiry.