Leveson Attack – Useful Idiot Speaks

As with the inevitability of night following day, Rob Wilson, who is nominally Tory MP for Reading East, has once again written to Lord Justice Leveson in an effort to undermine his Inquiry and facilitate efforts by the cheaper end of the Fourth Estate to smear all concerned and thus head off any prospect of press regulation being reformed to make it properly independent.

And Leveson has replied to Wilson, the letter being immediately seized upon by the press and selectively used to back up their Delia-style conclusion (one they made earlier). “Leveson barrister who had affair with Hacked Off lawyer had 'significant' role in inquiry, judge admits” thunders the Mail, and to no surprise at all, the word “significant” is not present in Leveson’s letter.

“The judge had initially suggested that Carine Patry Hoskins played only a minor role in his inquiry” asserts the Mail. Bullshit. Leveson said that she played no part in his conclusions, and that these were his, and his alone. “Following revelations that she was paid £218,000 for her work between July 2011 and November 2012, he came under pressure to reveal more about her role” the Mail continues.

No he didn’t: Lord Justice Leveson was merely giving Wilson the courtesy of a reply to his latest attempt to discredit the Inquiry. And, as Leveson has pointed out, “Ms Patry Hoskins is a member of the B panel of the Attorney General’s panel of Counsel, and was paid the appropriate hourly rate, set by the Government, in relation to her work for the Inquiry”.

That Ms Patry Hoskins was on a panel of Counsel had not previously stopped the Murdoch Sun from suggesting that she was a mere “office junior”, as I noted earlier this month. And Rupe’s downmarket troops have joined the latest attack, telling “LORD Justice Leveson admitted last night that the female barrister at the centre of the Loverson scandal made a ‘valuable contribution’ to his inquiry”.

What scandal? In Dominic Mohan’s dreams, maybe. And in those dreams is also the fatuous idea that Rob Wilson is other than a shit stirrer: “Last night Tory MP Rob Wilson said the revelations on Ms Hoskins’ role proved the secret affair was ‘completely inappropriate’. He said: ‘I am very surprised Lord Leveson has not taken any of the opportunities available to him to make this point clear’”.

As Lord Justice Leveson has already pointed out, the supposed affair had no effect on the work Carine Patry Hoskins did for the Inquiry, and she had no influence on the conclusions he reached. Nor has the press proved otherwise, other than via nudges and winks. The only mystery is what Rob Wilson is doing there: if the Sun and Mail find him farting out of turn, they won’t hesitate to trash him too.

Which makes him yet another useful, but deluded, idiot. No change there, then.