Sun CPS Non Disclosure

What do Young Dave and his jolly good chaps need from their press pals less than two weeks before the General Election? Well, it would be good if the UK’s best-selling newspaper were to dedicate its front page splash to either backing the Tories, or laying into their opponents. Sadly, though, Rupe’s downmarket troops at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun have a vendetta to pursue.

Under the banner “Exclusive: Law Chief In New Row”, readers are told about the “CRONY PROSECUTOR … DPP worked at same firm as Paedo rap Lord she let off”. Excuse me, but this is total horseshit. I spent some time on two separate assignments at a large multinational oil giant. That does not mean that I had any affinity for the company’s behavioural failings, or those of one or other of its staff.

I’ve also, more recently, spent a year doing Systems Management for a well-known City merchant bank. Zelo Street regulars may have detected a less than totally sympathetic view on this blog towards those in the financial sector pleading exemption when pay restraint or other financial self-sacrifice are demanded, or when one or more characters in the financial sector get caught exhibiting less than total probity.

Moreover, Alison Saunders, the DPP in the Sun’s sights, never met Greville Janner, the subject of the “Paedo rap” of which the paper speaks. And, as Jane Crowley QC has pointed out this morning, “Janner and Saunders NEVER associated with 1 Garden Court Family Law Chambers. Misleading news today”. Ms Crowley knows this because her address is, er, 1 Garden Court. That’s as in Temple.

It gets worse: as Peter Jukes has pointed out, if the Sun wants to shout about those who may have associated with alleged sex abusers, they are in a very draughty glasshouse: their former editor, the twinkle-toed yet domestically combative Rebekah Brooks, enjoyed a long association with the now disgraced Cliffus Maximus. Clifford is now on assignment in one of those hotels run at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.

As Joshua Rozerberg has told, Janner could not remember anyone’s name as recently as two years ago, and “According to the CPS summary of the doctors’ findings, Janner’s ‘evidence could not be relied upon in court and he could not have any meaningful engagement with the court process’. If that is correct, any judge would stop the case as an abuse of process. There simply cannot be a fair trial if the defence cannot be heard”.

The Sun, though, wants a trial, because it sells more papers, and Janner was a Labour MP. Just don’t mention Peter Morrison. The Murdoch press also wants to discredit the authorities because there are more trials of its journalists pending - which are, of course, not down to Alison Saunders, but the Murdoch empire, which shopped them in the first place. So it’s their own fault - but someone else is to blame.

The Sun’s version of the moral high ground is a truly extraordinary thing.