Labour is the political wing of ‘Hacked Off’

The night that proved Labour is the political wing of ‘Hacked Off’

By Andrew Pierce    PUBLISHED: 23:38, 19 March 2013 |

For almost three hours, senior figures from the Labour Party, the Lib Dems, and the pressure group Hacked Off wrangled over the detail of the proposed agreement paving the way for the first political regulation of the newspaper industry since 1695.

Bizarrely, Sunday’s crucial meeting, which started at 9pm, was not held in a Government minister’s office but in Labour leader Ed Miliband’s spacious Commons suite with its panoramic views of the River Thames.

And an analysis of the event provides an extraordinary insight into how Labour has become the political wing of a lobby group that includes Press-hating zealots, small-town academics, faded actors with rackety sex lives, and, oh yes, the S&M specialist Max Mosley.

Bizarrely, Sunday's crucial meeting, which started at 9pm, was not held in a Government minister's office but in Labour leader Ed Miliband's spacious Commons suite with its panoramic views of the River Thames

The gathering included Harriet Harman, the deputy Labour leader; Rosie Winterton, Opposition Chief Whip; former Labour Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer; and Nick Clegg.

To the fury of most Tory MPs, there were four representatives from Hacked Off, which is fronted by the actor Hugh Grant, including human rights lawyer Hugh Tomlinson QC; journalism professor Brian Cathcart; former Lib Dem MP Evan Harris, who recently took ecstasy on TV; and academic Martin Moore.

Significantly, there was no one from the newspaper industry, which was not even accorded the courtesy of being told about the meeting in advance.

Astonishingly, there were no Conservative Cabinet ministers either sitting around the long rectangle table in Miliband’s office under a portrait of Keir Hardie, founder of the modern Labour Party.

In fairness to Miliband and Harman, they had tried to secure the presence of Oliver Letwin, the Cabinet Office minister who has been engaged in talks on Press regulation for four months since the publication of Lord Leveson’s report.

Letwin, who is supposed to be the government authority on the fiendishly complex proposed system of regulation, was at his home in South London, apparently oblivious to the significance of the meeting. The six Cabinet Office civil servants who were present were unwilling or afraid to interrupt their political master’s Sunday evening.

Letwin had no idea Miliband had insisted, and Clegg had agreed, that Hacked Off had to be at the meeting to give its approval to any final blueprint for the regulatory machine for the newspaper industry.

As for the Prime Minister, he was in Downing Street, equally unaware of what was going on. His officials insist he had not gone to bed.

The gathering included Harriet Harman (left), the deputy Labour leader; Rosie Winterton, Opposition Chief Whip; former Labour Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer; and Nick Clegg

Tories outnumbered: There were also four representatives from Hacked Off, which is fronted by Hugh Grant (pictured), including human rights lawyer Hugh Tomlinson QC and journalism professor Brian Cathcart

Oliver Letwin, who is supposed to be the government authority on the fiendishly complex proposed system of regulation, was at his home in South London, apparently oblivious to the significance of the meeting

Yet it was obvious to everyone in Miliband’s office, including Letwin’s civil servants, that it was no routine gathering. Cameron, after months of insisting there would be no statute to underpin the new regulator, had clearly performed another U-turn.

Faced with certain Commons defeat in a vote on Press regulation scheduled for Monday, he had summoned Clegg to Downing Street on Sunday morning to tell him of his change of heart. Clegg, a long-standing supporter of statutory regulation, was delighted.

Later, standing on a playing field touchline watching one of his sons play football, he telephoned the Labour leader to say they were on the verge of a major breakthrough.

Harriet Harman then went to Miliband’s North London home and left after two hours, confident a deal was in their grasp. They agreed to meet at the Labour  leader’s office at 9pm.

As the meeting progressed, Harman — one of the most tribal Labour politicians — decided to contact the Tory MPs who had backed her campaign for a legislative solution.

Curiously, no efforts were made to contact Maria Miller, the hapless Conservative Culture Secretary

She texted George Eustice, a former Press secretary to Cameron who  was once a Ukip parliamentary candidate — and is known by the lobby as  Useless Eustice — to urge him to contact Oliver Letwin.

In the last text to Eustice at 10.40pm, Harman even appealed for the number of Letwin’s wife to see if she could help. Harman also tried to raise Letwin through another Tory MP and regular visitor to her Commons office — the millionaire Tory MP Zac Goldsmith.

Goldsmith had obtained a so-called super injunction in December 2008 preventing the publication of private emails which had been leaked to the Press.

Speaking at a Commons investigation into privacy, where he sat next to Hugh Grant, he had drawn a tasteless comparison between certain tabloids and the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.

(Goldsmith had argued that newspapers should not be given free rein to print stories about the private lives of famous people simply so they could sell more copies and remain financially viable. ‘No one said Auschwitz should have been kept open because it created jobs,’ he said.)

Harman texted him several times, despite the fact he had got married for the second time only two days earlier. ‘For heavens sake, I’m texting Zac Goldsmith on his honeymoon,’ she told others at the meeting. But Goldsmith, who is in a hot spot abroad, did not pick up her texts until Monday morning.

Miliband himself threatened to phone Letwin but, in the end, it took a call from Clegg, pulling his weight as Deputy PM, to prise Letwin from his home.

Curiously, no efforts were made to contact Maria Miller, the hapless Conservative Culture Secretary, whose brief covers media regulation and who is shadowed in the Commons by Harman.

‘No one even mentioned Maria Miller,’ said another source at the meeting. ‘She’s not in the loop.’

When Letwin (known to Tory MPs as Left-wing) finally deigned to arrive at 11.45pm, the people in the room were taken aback not just by his eccentric dress sense — he was wearing mustard-coloured corduroy trousers and a sky blue shirt — but also by the fact he brought with him takeaway pepperoni pizzas.

Outrage: Tory MPs are astonished that Cameron allowed the talks to carry on in the Labour leader's office with Hacked Off present, yet with no senior player from the newspaper industry

‘As Letwin was so late, it would have improved the mood if he had shared them, as we had survived on coffee and chocolate biscuits,’ said one source. Letwin, utterly nonplussed to see Hacked Off at the negotiating table, immediately retreated with the civil servants — and his pizzas — into the waiting room of Miliband’s office to telephone the Prime Minister and inform him of their presence.

Tory MPs are astonished that Cameron allowed the talks to carry on in the Labour leader’s office with Hacked Off present, yet with no senior player from the newspaper industry.

With a triumphant Miliband in the chair, and Letwin sitting sheepishly by his side after coming back into the main office, the meeting continued as Labour and Hacked Off called the shots. At one point, Miliband announced: ‘I have a piece of good news. Hugh Grant has left the country. He is on a plane to Los Angeles.’

Everyone cheered because the zealotry of Grant had been seen by all sides as a serious obstacle to progress. 

In fact, in a heated meeting in the Commons last week, he was rebuked by Ayesha Hazarika, Harman’s special adviser, over his militant views on tethering the Press.

Heavily outnumbered, Letwin was persuaded to roll over after Miliband joined him in the waiting room — where Letwin had once again retreated — for a confidential chat.

The Labour side knew it was in the bag when Miliband came back into his office clutching a slice of Letwin’s cold pizza.

The meeting ended at 2.30am. At 4am a message was sent by Harman’s office to the BBC saying: ‘Labour is confident of the basis of a deal for Press regulation after late-night talks’.

By 6am, Harman was out of her house and touring TV and radio studios to announce that Labour had won, the PM had crossed the Rubicon and thereby avoided an embarrassing Commons defeat, and the Commons vote was cancelled.

It wasn’t until nearer 8.30am that the Tories finally got their act together and sent Maria Miller out to bat on the airwaves. Just like the night before, it seems the Tories had been asleep on the job.

In the event, in a sad comment on a day in which Her Majesty’s Opposition had shown themselves to be in the thrall of a lobby group, the newspaper industry — representing countless millions of readers — was not told about what was in the charter until late afternoon the following day.

 
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