Former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie attacked David Cameron yesterday, accusing him of “obsessive” sycophancy toward Rupert Murdoch.
Addressing the Leveson inquiry, he demanded: “So where is David Cameron today? Where is our great Prime Minister who ordered this ludicrous inquiry?”
“Tony Blair was pretty good, as was [Gordon] Brown. But Cameron was the Daddy. Cameron wanted Rupert onside, as he believed, quite wrongly in my view, that the Sun’s endorsement would help him to victory.
“There was never a party, a breakfast, a lunch, a cuppa, a quiet word or a drink that Cameron and Co would not turn up to in force if the Great Man or his handmaiden Rebekah Brooks was there. Cameron had clearly gone potty and the final proof that he was certifiable was his hiring of Andy Coulson.”
Mr MacKenzie accused the Prime Minister of establishing the Leveson inquiry to dodge any personal fallout from the phone-hacking scandal.
He mocked: “How can I - a ho-hum Tory leader who couldn’t even win a general election in a recession against a turnip like Brown - avoid any fallout from the phone hacking? And the answer is this inquiry chaired by Lord Leveson.” Mr MacKenzie, who edited the Sun, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News International, between 1981 and 1994, said he did not believe the decision that the newspaper should ditch Gordon Brown and back the Tories in the middle of a Labour party conference was “Rupert’s idea”.
He told the inquiry: “Strangely, he is quite a cautious man. Whoever made that decision should hang their head in shame.”
He then went on to blame his successor Mrs Brooks and James Murdoch.
On phone-hacking, Mr MacKenzie, who is a Daily Mail columnist, said: “Yes there was criminal cancer at the News of The World.
“Yes, there were editorial and management errors as the extent of the cancer began to be revealed. But why do we need an inquiry of this kind? There are plenty of laws to cover what went on. After all, 16 people have already been arrested, and my bet is that the number may well go to 30 once police officers involved in corruption are rounded up too.
“This inquiry should decide there is nothing wrong with the press, that we should enshrine free speech in Cameron’s planned Bill of Rights and accept the scandal was simply a moment in time when low-grade criminality took over a newspaper.” - Daily Mail