Leveson's lesson

A whole raft of British politicians are being tested by Robert Jay at the Leveson inquiry into press standards. Some are accused of lying. That of course is absurd. They are on oath and they are not lying. What however they are revealing is a murky world of over-powerful journalists and intimidated ambitious politicians in which so many things of great importance in the government of Britain are based on perceptions of the truth rather than on any objective kind of truth.

Today it was the turn of Prime Minister, David Cameron, who described as nonsense the idea that his party in opposition made a policy deal with Rupert Murdoch to secure his support for the Tory party in the 2010 election.

He is right. It is absurd. However the focusing on his denial obscures the fact that this doesn't really matter in the light of what really happened. We acctually heard that Rebekah Brooks, News International's Chief Executive, texted David Cameron on the eve of his 2009 Tory Conference speech to tell him the she was "rooting for him" in the election. She claimed that she and Mr. Cameron were "in this together" and ended her message wih a rousing "Yes,we Cam".

We don't know David Cameron's reply. We do however know that the Tories, by their own admission, had been working hard to secure the support of the Murdoch papers. It seems highly unlikely that David Cameron's reply to Rebekah Brooks was "Dear Rebekah, Your comments are not at all appropriate."

But inappropriate they surely were, because Rebekah's adulatory commitment to Tory success surely meant that the newspapers she controlled or influenced would report the news in a way that was favourable to that same commitment she had made. We, the people, would then be denied from that powerful source an objective presentation of events.

What really matters is that Rebekah Brooks felt that it was fine for her to address David Cameron as she did. The true political indictment of our politicians is that they ever permitted a culture in which the chief executive of a news organ ever thought it acceptable to write to a politician in such terms. It is the same unquestioning assumption that causes TV political programmers to give so much broadcast time to journalist commentators who sneer and scorn at politicians.

They are not elected. They do not speak for us. Too many of them behave like members of a self preserving elite arrogantly congratulating themselves and each other on their superiority, which many of us recognise only as superficial bigotry. We now have all we need to know from Leveson. We do not need to debate the accusations, denials and counter accusations. The uncontested truth is enough to cause us to demand that this must end and that we the people will no longer be the servants of deception but we will have, and value as precious, the democratic right to choose upon an honest presentation of the news and not upon a version covertly filtered through the opinion of a journalist.