Category Archives: National newspapers
Guardian to launch new platform to streamline access to web content
Theguardian.com will provide one destination for UK, mobile, US and Australian sites as monthly digital browsers hits 80m
The Guardian is to launch a new global web presence, theguardian.com, in recognition of the newspaper’s increasingly international digital appeal.
The move will streamline access to Guardian content – amalgamating the main entry point Guardian.co.uk, mobile site m.guardian.co.uk, US homepage guardiannews.com and the soon-to-launch Australian digital edition – into one core web destination.
In the last five years, the number of monthly Guardian digital browsers has grown from 20 million to more than 80 million, with much of that growth coming from international markets.
“Every month, our online content is accessed from almost every country around the world,” said Tanya Cordrey, chief digital officer at Guardian News & Media, in a blog post called Going global on our digitaljourney. “In fact, UK users now represent just a third of our total audience.”
The home of the newspaper’s content has been guardian.co.uk, which is the only non-”dot com” domain suffix in the top 10 Google News list of digital news outlets.
“This may be a small URL change, but it marks a big step for the Guardian and reflects our evolution from a much-respected national print newspaper based only in the UK … to a leading global news and media brand … and an ever-growing worldwide audience accessing Guardian journalism every minute of every day,” said Cordrey.
Cordrey added that the move to theguardian.com will make for a simplified user experience, but will also be more appealing to major advertisers in international markets, who are perhaps not drawn to the idea of running campaigns on a UK-specific website, despite the reality of the Guardian’s global digital readership.
The move, which will take place later this year, will involve the transition of millions of URLs attached to the Guardian’s websites and about 15 years of archived content.
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Press regulation: six select committee MPs oppose alternative for watchdog
Labour and Liberal Democrats have written to culture secretary about rival royal charter being put forward by Pressbof
Six MPs on the influential Commons culture, media and sport select committee have announced that they do not support the press industry’s plan for a new regulator backed by a royal charter.
The six Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs have written to the privy council and the culture secretary, Maria Miller, to say they reject the rival royal charter being put forward by the Press Board of Finance (Pressbof), which funds the Press Complaints Commission, to underpin a new regulator.
They said they are backing the original government charter, agreed by the three main parties in a late-night meeting in Ed Milliband’s office in March during negotiations that also included members of the Hacked Off group campaigning for stricter press regulation.
The MPs have branded the rival charter “a last ditch attempt to repeat the mistakes of the past” by the press industry and said they are basing their decision on the extensive experience gained through culture select committee evidence hearings in 2011 when they helped exposed the phone-hacking scandal.
“At the end of the day, Pressbof, which is dominated by the big national newspapers, funded and oversaw a regime that failed because it was far too much controlled by the industry itself. This rival charter is a last ditch attempt to repeat the mistakes of the past and should be resisted, in the interests of effective, independent regulation and decent press standards,” they have said in their submission.
The letter is signed by Labour’s Ben Bradshaw, the former culture secretary, and former newspaper journalist and Labour MP Paul Farrelly. The other signatories are: Labour’s Steve Rotheram, Jim Sheridan and Gerry Sutcliffe and Lib Dem MP John Leech.
Their position is at odds with that of the chairman of the committee, Tory MP John Whittingdale, who has said the press royal charter should be considered.
On Tuesday Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights campaigning organisation Liberty, came out against both royal charters saying the whole idea of using this archaic instrument was bizarre and unworkable.
“A royal charter is constitutionally inappropriate, undemocratic, opaque and in no way fit for this purpose,” said Liberty.
Chakrabarti and the MPs were making their comments ahead of Thursday’s deadline for submissions to the Department for Culture Media and Sport on the Presbof royal charter.
Pressure group Hacked Off is also opposed to the press charter. It is backed by the UK’s biggest newspaper groups, including Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers and News International, owner of the Sun and the Times, in additional to the owners of more than 1,000 regional and local papers and major magazine publishers.
Publishers backing the press royal charter have warned that the government’s plan could kill off local media by opening the floodgates to “claims farming lawyers” seeking compensation for minor errors relating to those featuring in newspapers already struggling to survive.
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Pearson switches Financial Times into new business division
The Financial Times is being subsumed into a new division by its parent company, Pearson.
As part of the organisation’s restructure, the FT Group will disappear and the newspaper will become part of a unit called “professional”. Its chief executive will be John Ridding, who is currently CEO of the FT group.
Professional will also include Pearson’s global English learning business and its electronic testing business. It is hard to see what these three very different types of business have to do with each other.
However, it is suggested that the rationale for yoking the language-teaching with the publishing of the paper is that adults learning English in foreign countries are considered to be the kind of people likely to read the FT. Maybe.
The other intriguing aspect is whether the FT’s financial results will be split out from the other parts of the new division. I understand that Pearson has yet to decide on that issue.
A spokesman explained that there were still many details to be worked out. The company is expected to make that clear before the restructure is implemented on 1 January 2014. Its first results will therefore be published the following July.
But he said that for 2013 – which will include the full-year 2013 results to be announced around the end of February 2014 – the report will be made under the existing structure, in which the FT Group is reported separately.
The appointment of Ridding as CEO, giving him greater responsibility for a larger business unit, is certainly a feather in his cap. He only took charge of the FT Group earlier this year after becoming chief executive of the Financial Times itself in 2006.
Prior to that, he had several senior editorial posts at the FT, with spells as its deputy editor and publisher of its Asian outlet.
Under the new Pearson structure, the company will be organised around three global lines of business – school, higher education and professional – and three geographic market categories – north America, growth and core.
Genevieve Shore, currently Pearson’s chief technology officer, will take on a new role as chief product and marketing officer. Will Ethridge, CEO of Pearson North America, will step down from his role.
John Fallon, Pearson’s chief executive, said: “This new organisation structure flows directly from the strategy that we set out earlier this year. It is designed to make Pearson more digital, more services-oriented, more focused on emerging economies and more accountable for learning outcomes.
“This is a significant change in the way we run the company that will take time and sustained commitment, but it is one we must make to be able to accelerate the execution of our global education strategy.”
Comment: This move, as with any move involving the Financial Times, is bound to set off yet more rumours about the paper being sold. I think it does the opposite. It suggests that Pearson is as committed to the FT as it has been for many years past.
That won’t stop the gossip of course. But really, isn’t it about time that people realised the pink paper (salmon in the US) is not for sale?
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Newspaper royal charter plans are ‘bizarre’, says Liberty director
Shami Chakrabarti blasts government and press proposals for watchdog, saying they have failed to follow Leveson blueprint
A key adviser to the Leveson report, the civil rights campaigner Shami Chakrabarti, has hit out against politicians and newspaper barons, accusing them of letting down the public over promises to set up a new press watchdog.
One of six assessors on the Leveson inquiry and the director of Liberty, Chakrabarti branded plans to launch a watchdog backed by a royal charter as “bizarre” and said that all politicians and the newspaper industry has done is to create “confusion and resentment” by putting forward rival proposals.
“A royal charter is constitutionally inappropriate, undemocratic, opaque and in no way fit for this purpose,” Liberty said in a submission to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Chakrabarti called on politicians and the press to stop prevaricating but warned that neither charter would work.
“Six months on and still no sign of any real progress – and current squabbling over bizarre royal charters has achieved nothing but confusion and resentment. The Leveson report contained an effective blueprint for a decent self-regulator so why hasn’t it been set up?” said Chakrabarti.
She was making her comments ahead of Thursday’s deadline for responses to the government on the industry’s proposal to launch an independent self-regulator backed by its its own royal charter, instead of the version agreed between the three main political parties and Hacked Off in a late night deal in March.
Chakrabarti said that the victims of the press and ethical journalists “need protection” and that the “public needs confidence restored”.
“Everyday politicians and press barons prevaricate is another letting everyone down,” Chakrabarti added.
Liberty said it had fundamental issues with the concept of a royal charter, which was first hatched by David Cameron’s policy tsar Oliver Letwin as a means to set up a regulator that was not backed by statute but had more checks in place than the current Press Complaints Commission.
In a statement, Liberty said: “The limitations inherent to a royal charter make it difficult to achieve a truly independent recognition body. As is obvious from both charters, it creates an overly complex and bureaucratic system – which reflects the interests of the creator. For example, the press model would have the body funded by the press, whereas the politicians’ version would be funded from the exchequer.”
In its a submission to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Liberty said the two competing royal charters also appear to be in breach of the privy council’s own criteria for assessing whether such a document should be granted.
Liberty also has issues with the proposed recognition panel, which would audit the watchdog’s performance, and with plans for punitive fines being imposed on publishers who chose not to sign up to the press regulator.
It says the role of recognition should be performed by the judiciary “to ensure independence from press and politicians”.
The involvement of the courts would eliminate the need for a bureacratic appointments panel as currently envisaged by the government and the press, according to Liberty.
Liberty supports punitive damages being awarded in the high court for breaches of confidence or breaches of privacy but says “failure to join an effective regulatory body not lead automatically to an award of exemplary damages”.
Exemplary damages were proposed in the Leveson report as part of the “carrot and stick” approach to self-regulation. Lord Justice Leveson believed the threat of huge fines in the high court would be an incentive to join the regulator but this has been challenged by the press and by several peers, including Lord Lester, who believes it would be a breach of European law.
Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers has also said it is implacably opposed to exemplary damages and has considered boycotting a regulation system that included. Other newspapers including the Guardian have also expressed opposition to punitive damages.
David Cameron has promised to consider the industry’s royal charter proposal which emerged as a surprise development last month.
Hacked Off has called on Cameron to stick with the original royal charter plan, but behind the scenes every effort is being made to find a solution that will win the pressure group’s support and that of newspapers including the Guardian and the Financial Times, which have some reservations about the industry’s royal charter.
One source said: “A deal is being shaped, but what shape it will take is not known yet.”
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Met police defend decision not to pursue leaks
• Memo said ‘inner sanctum’ secrets were at risk
• Scotland Yard tried to gag Leveson inquiry, says QC
Scotland Yard on Monday defended a decision it made not to take action over intelligence it received alleging leaks of internal secrets from its “inner sanctum”, potentially to the News of the World (NoW).
The intelligence is contained in a Met document generated in April 2006 at a time when the then commissioner, Sir Ian Blair (now Lord Blair), faced internal ructions and a hostile press.
The secret memo is at the centre of new claims that the Met used a legal gag to stop the Leveson inquiry exploring the issues that it raised.
The document’s heading refers to a man who in 2006 was a suspect in a murder the Met were investigating, and says the person “is aware a member of the commissioner’s [Blair's] inner sanctum is reporting back to” and then names a former senior Met officer as the recipient of the information.
The memo continues that the leaks related “to actions taken by the commissioner and proposed policy decisions”. It adds the murder suspect “has had this confirmed”. It then mentions a News of the World executive. For legal reasons the names of the murder suspect, the former senior Metropolitan police officer and the NoW executive cannot be published.
Earlier, it emerged that the lead counsel to the Leveson inquiry, Robert Jay QC, said Scotland Yard had claimed “public interest immunity” in relation to the internal intelligence report. Asked why he did not question senior former Met officers who gave evidence to the inquiry, which included former commissioners Lord Stevens, Blair and Sir Paul Stephenson, about this matter, Jay said the inquiry was not shown the police report until 23 April, after the three had given evidence.
In a statement, Jay said: “The Metropolitan Police Service [MPS] is claiming public interest immunity in relation to any police intelligence report, the contents of which are neither confirmed nor denied.”
He added that the inquiry had continuing “obligations of confidence” to the police in relation to their submissions. “These factors have at all stages limited what I am able to place in the public domain, and continue to do so,” he said.
The “inner sanctum” referred to in the intelligence report is almost certainly the Met’s management board, which meets every weekday morning at Scotland Yard and where the force’s leaders discuss its biggest issues. In a statement, the Met said of the document: “It did not identify an individual as the source of information allegedly being disclosed from the MPS management board and it was not considered that it warranted further action.
“Intelligence reports may contain sensitive information and this document was therefore shared with the [Leveson] inquiry on a confidential basis.”
The force declined to deny using public interest immunity at Leveson, and said: “Throughout the inquiry, the MPS were scrupulous in disclosing to the inquiry everything that could be relevant to the inquiry’s deliberations. This included documents which could attract a claim for public interest immunity. We do not confirm or deny if public interest immunity has been sought in relation to any material provided to the inquiry.”
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Met ‘gagged’ Leveson evidence over police leaks to News of the World
Scotland Yard stopped inquiry from revealing internal intelligence about senior Scotland Yard officer, it has been claimed
Scotland Yard has been accused of covering up intelligence that could have been of vital importance to the Leveson inquiry which allegedly claims that a very senior police officer was leaking information to the News of the World.
A year after a series of current and former Metropolitan police commissioners gave evidence to the inquiry, Robert Jay QC, counsel to the inquiry, confirmed that Scotland Yard had claimed “public interest immunity” in relation to the internal intelligence report, written in 2006.
Asked why he did not question senior Met police who gave evidence to the inquiry, which included former commissioners Lord Stevens, Lord Blair and Sir Paul Stephenson and other senior Met officers, about this matter, Jay said the inquiry was not shown the police report until after they had given evidence.
According to Monday’s London Evening Standard the classified document suggested the officer — who is not named for legal reasons — passed the leak on to the tabloid for money.
Tom Watson, the Labour MP and one of the most high profile critics of the News of the World at the height of the phone-hacking scandal, called on Met commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, and the home secretary, Theresa May, to “urgently review” what happened.
He said: “People may have forgotten there is supposed to be a part two to the Leveson inquiry. This strengthens the argument for the second part to be held after the trials [of former News of the World staff].
“It’s very clear that an intelligence document exists that should be significant in showing the relationship between very senior officer at the Met and executives at News International and I think the home secretary and the commissioner should review the file. If they have nothing to hide they should release it.”
The inquiry into press ethics started in November 2011 and held evidence-gathering hearings for nine months, devoting an entire module, lasting several weeks, to examining the relationship between the press and the police.
When Lord Justice Leveson finally published his report last November, he criticised the Metropolitan police for errors in its handling of the phone-hacking scandal and for fostering a “perception” that some senior officers were too close to News International. He said “decisions made in the period 2006-2010 can be characterised as insufficiently thought through … wrong and unduly defensive”.
Jay, who is poised to become a high court judge, confirmed that the report was not submitted by Scotland Yard until 23 April last year. This was seven weeks after Stevens, Blair, Stephenson and other senior police officers were quizzed by Leveson.
In a statement Jay said: “The Metropolitan Police Service is claiming public interest immunity in relation to any police intelligence report, the contents of which are neither confirmed nor denied.”
He added had the inquiry had a continuing “obligations of confidence” to the police in relation to their submissions. “These factors have at all stages limited what I am able to place in the public domain, and continue to do so,” he said.
That the Met was apparently able to gag Jay and Leveson will raise fresh questions about the inquiry’s ability to deliver David Cameron’s demands when he launched the inquiry in July 2011 at the height of the phone-hacking scandal and following the revelations that murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s phone messages had been intercepted by the News of the World.
At the time he told the Commons that what the country needed “to confront is an episode that is frankly disgraceful, accusations of widespread law-breaking by parts of our press; alleged corruption by some police officers; a failure of our political system over many, many years to tackle a problem that’s been getting worse”.
Jay said he had his hands tied in relation to the contents of the intelligence report. He said the Met “first provided me with a copy of a police intelligence report on 23 April 2012″, which he said was well after senior officers had testified.
In a statement, Jay said he had received confidential information from at least two sources, including the MPS, in relation to the alleged leak but at the time had not been shown the police report.
The intelligence report was written in 2006, the year it first emerged that at least one reporter on the News of the World was engaged in phone hacking.
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David Cameron, the ‘loons’ and gay marriage – what the national papers say
These are dark days for David Cameron and his government. Today’s newspapers, in company with TV and radio news bulletins, are dominated by disputes within his party over same-sex marriage and the European Union.
In addition, the claims about one of the prime minister’s aides having referred to party activists as “swivel-eyed loons” is the subject of several leading articles and surely adds to the air of gloom in Downing Street.
Every national daily carries reports on the determination of a significant proportion of Tory MPs to wreck Cameron’s plans to legalise gay marriage.
Three splash on the issue: “Tory rebels set to inflict new defeat on Cameron” (The Times); “Meltdown on gay marriage” (Daily Mail); and “No 10 pleads with Labour to save gay marriage bill” (The Guardian).
The Daily Telegraph chooses the “loons” affair: “Tories begin defecting to Ukip over ‘loons’ slur” but also gives front page space to a piece on the other drama, “Tory rebels back ‘wrecking’ plan for gay marriage bill”.
The Sun’s page two draws all three issues together under the headline “Loony doom: Mad row, Europe and gay marriage ‘destroying’ Tories”. Its political commentator, Trevor Kavanagh, tries to see it in positive terms for Cameron, as long as he follows an anti-EU policy.
The Independent splashes on Europe, “British business: We need to stay in the EU – or risk losing up to £92bn a year”, after being the recipient of a letter from “some of Britain’s most successful and eminent business leaders.”
The signatories include Richard Branson, Martin Sorrell, BT chairman Michael Rake, Lloyds bank chairman Win Bischoff, and UBM chair Helen Alexander.
The triple drama is too good an opportunity for the Daily Mirror to resist. It devotes a spread, headlined (somewhat optimistically from a Labour point of view) “Cam’s last stand”.
But Cameron will be much more concerned by the leading articles and op-ed articles in the papers that traditionally back his party.
In spite of the Conservative co-chairman, Lord Feldman, having denied telling two journalists that Tory constituency activists are “mad, swivel-eyed loons”, the Mail believes the “casual insult… chimes exactly with how members of Downing Street’s inner circle tend to describe those who deviate from the official party line.”
It says: “This contemptuous attitude has created division and distrust at the very moment the party should be pulling together to win the next election.”
Referring also to Lord Howe’s “warning” that Cameron risks losing control of his party, it reminds the prime minister that his activists will be doing the donkey work at election time rather than “the chums he has surrounded himself with at Number Ten.”
The Times pursues a similar theme in its editorial, “Time To Swivel”, in which it argues that “Cameron is in danger of alienating not only his enemies but also his friends.”
Whether or not Feldman did or did not describe party members as “mad, swivel-eyed loons”, the paper detects that it “is indicative of more than a split between the core of a political party and its fringes. Rather, it highlights an attitude at the heart of government, and one that is neither pleasant nor wise.”
It continues by talking of the elephant in the Tory’s party’s headquarters:
“Mr Cameron and his inner circle may well be right to believe that an election cannot be won by dogged adherence to the views of the Conservative base. But they are quite wrong to regard those views, and those who hold them, with such thinly disguised disdain.
This latest critique of grassroots Conservatives is strikingly redolent of Mr Cameron’s own dismissal in 2006 of Ukip supporters as ‘fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists’.
Indeed, there are a great many similarities between many Conservative activists and the party of Nigel Farage. Predominantly, both groups are older than Mr Cameron, less affluent than Mr Cameron, and likely to lead less metropolitan lives.
They are likely to worry about equal marriage, likely to be hostile towards the European Union, and likely to be sceptical about climate change. As these comments show, contempt for the views of such people morphs all too easily into contempt for the people themselves and for their circumstances.”
The Times, reminding readers that it too supports “equal marriage”, “understands that a Conservative party that takes dramatic steps in the direction of Ukip or even Conservative activism is one that will not win an election again.” But it concludes:
“Mr Cameron and his close advisers must recognise that it is not mad or ‘swivel-eyed’ to take a different view, and that there is a decent, hard-working, less metropolitan sort of Conservatism that is worthy of their respect. When inclusivity begins to exclude, something is badly awry.”
A variation of that viewpoint is explored in historical terms in the Telegraph by Tim Bale, a professor of politics at London’s Queen Mary university, in a piece headlined “Swivel-eyed, or seeing clearly?”
He thinks “many activists are clearly livid with a leadership they believe is riding roughshod over everything they hold dear” while “the high command… is increasingly exasperated with its own supporters.”
Bale believes angry Tories are prepared to do “irreparable harm” to Mr Cameron’s “slim” electoral chances and may well accept the “loons” label as “a badge of honour”.
Though uncertain that most Tory activists fit the stereotype of being “hidebound specimens” who are against the EU, overseas aid, wind farms and gay marriage, he contends that while “public attitudes have become noticeably more permissive over time, those of ordinary Tory members have not changed quite as quickly as everyone else’s.”
There is now, he writes, “a profound mismatch between the Conservative party as an institution and the lives of its 21st-century membership.”
At its foundation, its membership “was rooted in deference, and dependent on people prepared to do the donkey work without demanding any serious say on policy.” Her continues:
“All this… has now changed utterly… the party’s membership, particularly that of its activists, has been reduced to its essence – boiled down, if you like, to people with motivation over and above the norm…
To attend party conference nowadays is to see this split manifest. A few members of the silent majority still gamely turn up, but many more who might have gone before are absent – priced out of the event by the lobbyists and wannabes, or else convinced that it’s all got a bit too serious for the likes of them.
Today’s Tory members have also been influenced by the very consumerist ideology that their party did so much to champion. Activists want MPs – and ministers – who allow them to express their choices and get what they want immediately, in exactly the same way as they can every day in the market.”
In The Daily Express, Chris Roycroft-Davis, asks: “Why has Cameron turned against his own supporters?”
He also considers the division between the party leadership and core voters. Or, to put in his pejorative terms, “a socially elite clique of public schoolboys and Oxford graduates” as distinct from a party of “once-loyal supporters” who are “ordinary people like you and I.”
He can understand why they (he?) are now prepared to give their votes to – Ukip, “the Eighties Conservative party reincarnated.”
The Express’s “ordinary people” are different, however, from those who inhabit what The Independent calls “the real world” where, according to its editorial, “the majority of voters support same-sex marriage.”
Moreover, despite what Eurosceptics may say about Britain being better off outside the EU, the paper believes the letter sent to it by business leaders suggests otherwise.
Despite approaching matters from a different political perspective, the Indy appears to agree with the Telegraph’s Bale and the Express’s Roycroft-Davis by concluding:
“Not only is the Conservative Party splitting itself in two – it is leaving the electorate far behind.”
And Steve Richards, writing (unusually) in The Guardian, appears to agree with them too.
“Tory activists,” he writes, “have been subjected to a clunky, unsubtle ‘modernisation’ project in which social liberalism, while sincerely espoused, has been added on to the right-wing programme partly in an attempt to secure broader appeal.” He continues:
“There has been little deep thinking from Cameron about what a modern Conservative party might be like, but rather a shallow effort to retain most of the thinking on Europe and the state that lost the Conservatives three successive elections, with the addition of support for gay marriage.
The result is an unsatisfying, insubstantial clash between unreformed dwindling local parties and a leadership that acquired the top positions far too early in their careers with only half-formed ideas about what they wanted to change in relation to their party and the country.”
Political crises come and go, of course, and with them go the memories of the articles by political journalists and leader writers who so often suggest that each crisis betrays a deep division of some sort or other.
This time around, I tend to think they are on the ball. Even though the Daily Mirror’s Kevin Maguire could be accused of over-stating his case by writing that “the prime minister stinks of defeat”, his six-word summing up of the longer articles I’ve mentioned above does have the ring of truth.
How Cameron must pray for the Argentinians to invade the Falklands once more. It saved Margaret Thatcher from likely electoral defeat. Then again, would he act as Thatcher did? Discuss.
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Tory co-chairman Feldman to face meeting over ‘swivel-eyed loons’ claim
Party board’s involvement likely to dismay No 10, which has spent weekend rubbishing reports in Times and Daily Telegraph
Lord Feldman, the Conservative co-chairman, is to be challenged at a meeting of the party board on Monday over allegations that he made disparaging remarks about Tory grassroots activists.
As the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, led a cabinet fightback on behalf of Feldman, who denies having described activists as “mad, swivel-eyed loons”, a member of the Tory party board said he would be asking Feldman to explain himself.
Brian Binley, the Conservative MP for Northampton South who has been an officer of the party for 54 years, said: “This is a very disturbing matter and needs a full and proper review at the party board meeting. From that meeting I will decide how I will act thereafter.”
The involvement of the board, which represents the views of Tory activists, will dismay Downing Street after it spent the weekend rubbishing reports in the Times and Daily Telegraph about Feldman’s alleged comments. Feldman described the reports as “completely untrue”.
No 10 was particularly sensitive because the alleged remarks revived criticism of the Tory leadership for being aloof and out of touch. Hunt spoke for Downing Street when he told the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1: “The person who is alleged to have said that has denied it and I know the individual and I trust him. “
The unease across the party was highlighted yesterday when 35 current or former Conservative associations handed in a letter to Downing Street that accused the prime minister of showing “utter contempt” for the grassroots activists after pressing ahead with legislation for equal marriage. But Cameron came under fire from another wing when Lord Howe of Aberavon, the former chancellor, warned that he was losing control of the party on Europe.
Ben Harris-Quinney, the chairman of the Bow Group and director of Conservative Grassroots, which drummed up support for the letter, said of Feldman’s alleged remarks: “It doesn’t matter who made these comments, the problem is that it comes as no surprise and is representative of a wider malaise in the party – the disconnect between the leadership and the grassroots, between conservatism and the leadership of the Conservative party. The tail cannot continue to wag the dog.”
The Bow Group, which was founded in 1951, intervened in the wake of Feldman’s alleged remarks on Wednesday night, said to have been made shortly after 116 Tory MPs showed their unease with David Cameron over Europe and voted in favour of an amendment regretting the absence of a EU referendum in the Queen’s speech.
Taunted by a journalist about the vote, an unnamed senior member of Cameron’s inner circle was quoted by the Times and the Daily Telegraph as saying: “It’s fine. There’s really no problem. The MPs just have to do it because the associations tell them to, and the associations are all mad, swivel-eyed loons.”
The alleged remarks were particularly damaging because they appeared to echo the prime minister’s language. The FT reported in March that Cameron “tells colleagues that anyone who wants to talk to him about the EU is ‘swivel-eyed’“. The FT article was not challenged by No 10.
Downing Street said over the weekend that the Times and Telegraph, which reported the remarks, had no credibility because they had declined to name Feldman, who admitted talking briefly to journalists at the Intercontinental Hotel at Westminster.
The Tory co-chair recognised one of the journalists when he popped out of a private room, where he was attending a dinner hosted by the Conservative Friends of Pakistan.
The journalist and another colleague, who was attending a dinner in the hotel’s Blue Boar Smokehouse restaurant with the prime minister’s former civil service press secretary Steve Field, had a brief conversation with Feldman about the vote. Field and two other journalists did not hear the conversation.
Feldman has said that he is consulting his lawyers over the publication of the comments, which he said do not “represent my view of our activists”.
The veteran MP Brian Binley said: “I am angry because this makes the job of the voluntary sector so much difficult. The voluntary sector is the Conservative party, the leadership is the caretaker of the party not its proprietor. If a small group of people think they know better to the point where they insult party members in this way – if that is what has happened and I need to know whether that is what has happened – then I will be very angry indeed.
“I would be hurt and surprised if Andrew Feldman said these things. But I am in a serious quandary here because I don’t believe senior journalists would say these things if they didn’t have the basis of truth. That is why it is no good simply saying Andrew Feldman is an honourable man, it is no good simply saying I’m going to talk to my lawyer about this. I personally – and the voluntary sector – need to know the truth of this matter.”
Binley said he was shocked by the way in which the Tory leadership has accused the Times and Daily Telegraph of lying. “I have been around for a long time and I recognise that people might think I am a backwoodsman. I have been a party agent, a county councillor and an MP for eight years. I have always had a good relationship with journalists, local and national, and have only ever been misquoted and mistreated by one group of journalists – and that was over the expenses issue. I have never felt the need to feel unhappy with any other journalist.
David Mellor, a former member of John Major’s cabinet, said the row highlighted the need to have a heavyweight figure as Tory chairman. Feldman is co-chairman along with the MP Grant Shapps. Mellor told the Murnaghan Programme on Sky News: “I am old enough to remember the days when the Tory party chairman was a serious political figure and chosen because they were a serious political figure. Feldman is a great friend of the prime minister.
“He strenuously denies [the remarks]. But, if so, I have to say as a former lawyer – sue them. Where is the writ? I think we will find the writ will not appear. If it was him – as newspapers suggest – then this has been a disaster waiting to happen because you cannot elevate tennis playing friends to be chairman of the Conservative party without there being a political price to pay.”
The criticism of Cameron over Europe by Lord Howe prompted a withering intervention by Lord Mandelson. He told the Andrew Marr Show: “We all know what’s going on inside the Conservative party. The UK isolation party and their fellow travellers in the Conservatives are sort of operating a Soprano-style protection racket inside the Conservative party. They are saying: ‘Do what we want, give us what we are demanding, or we are going to burn your home down.’”
Mandelson added: “Just because one wing – the provisional wing – of the Conservative party want to bring down their leader and change their party’s policy and are using this as an issue to do so is not a good reason to hold a referendum.”
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Times foreign editor Richard Beeston dies of cancer
Foreign correspondent and editor of 30 years standing witnessed events in world’s troublespots from Chechnya to Halabja
Richard Beeston, foreign correspondent and later foreign editor of The Times, has died of cancer aged 50.
Known as “Rick”, Beeston spent 30 years reporting from troublespots across the globe, beginning his foreign correspondent career aged 21 covering South Africa and the Lebanese civil war.
On joining the Times he had postings in Jerusalem and Moscow, where he reported on the conflict in Chechnya. He was also one of the first reporters on the scene in the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja after Saddam Hussein launched a chemical gas attack in which 5,000 died.
As foreign editor, and after his cancer diagnosis, Beeston continued to cover frontline assignments, including reporting from post-Saddam Iraq, Afghanistan and from behind rebel lines in Syria.
John Witherow, acting editor of the Times, announced his death on Sunday morning, saying he had “fought the constant recurrences of his cancer with dogged courage”.
“He often said that just coming into the office kept him going, and he continued to show his sense of humour, superb judgment and love of life right to the end,” Witherow wrote in a note to staff.
“He has been one of the great foreign editors of the Times, but more importantly, a truly wonderful human being. Everyone who has seen him in recent days has been struck by his passion for the paper, his calmness, his curiosity about the world and his concern for others”.
The Times reported that he died peacefully at his home in west London early on Sunday morning after his wife, Natasha, read him four chapters of Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop. He is survived by Natasha and their two children, Jack and Georgia.
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Woolwich attack – why editors were right to publish horrific pictures
The radio stations were on early this morning – was it right and proper for newspapers to publish front pages pictures of a man they called a terrorist brandishing a meat cleaver?
Answer: yes. There are all sorts of arguments in favour. Practical and technological first – pictures and film clips of the incident were across social media within minutes. Newspapers (and TV) would have looked completely daft to ignore what was already in the public domain.
The man wasn’t trying to hide from the spotlight. He was aware he was “speaking to camera” in order to deliver “a message” that attempted to justify his unjustifiable act.
It could be said that the media were playing into his hands by giving him the publicity he was seeking. But, given the situation, there was a need to explain. And the pictures lifted from the filmed footage were therefore essential to the exercise.
This was a highly unusual event that, by its very unusualness, warranted an unusual response from the media. It was barbaric, horrific, tragic, senseless… even a collective of adjectives is inadequate to describe what happened.
I agree that the image was appalling. The meat cleaver. The bloodied hands. The obvious rage of the perpetrator. It prompted my two elder grandsons, who mostly ignore the papers on the table in the mornings, to ask all sorts of questions.
On the way to school, the discussion continued. They were, of course, desperate to understand why two men had hacked another man to death in a London street on a spring afternoon.
After I had dropped them off I thought more about the problems all editors faced and, it should be noted, all but one (the counter intuitive Daily Express) took the same decision.
It is possible to argue against publication from two opposing directions: the image of a brazen killer will encourage others to follow suit, leading to more Islamic terrorist outrages; or the image will encourage anti-Muslim feeling and generate Islamophobia.
But media editors, while wishing to avoid provoking anti-social and criminal behaviour, cannot be responsible for far-fetched consequences of their decision to publish news stories. Editors cannot edit in order to ensure they protect us from the feeble-minded. It would make the job impossible and, taken to its logical conclusions, nothing would ever get published.
Editors also confronted a second problem in whether to carry pictures of the dead man’s body, which also required them to pause for thought. Would it be regarded as an intrusion into the grief of his relatives? Would it be regarded as tasteless?
Again, on balance, I think the newspapers were correct because they needed to convey the brutality of a murder that appeared to have been carried out as an act of terrorism. It was shocking to see it but it was even more shocking that it happened at all.
There may be objections later that the pictured men cannot expect to get a “fair” trial. I somehow feel that a judge will laugh any such legal quibble out of court.
Newspaper editors, in trying to do their job – in company with television news editors – were confronted with a bizarre and barbarous act. They had to react as they did.
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