The Sun Misses Emma Pidding

As the Sun joins the chorus calling for the head of Tory chairman Andrew Feldman, with the party’s bullying scandal having already claimed the scalp of Grant “Spiv” Shapps, editor Tony Gallagher is seemingly still not asking why the stories brought to him by alleged “Westminster Correspondent” Harry Cole have suggested the influence of now-disgraced Mark Clarke - including the latest one.

The Sun misses out the one on the right

Let me put this directly: Cole’s stories have featured signed original letters to Clarke from Shapps, and David Cameron. Those letters can only have been made available by the recipient - Mark Clarke. Cole has not - yet - admitted to contact with his long-standing friend. But there must have been some sort of contact, otherwise those letters would not have been made available to the paper.

Clarke’s hand may have influenced today’s Sun splash, with Cole’s name one of two on the by-line (the other being Steve Hawkes), under the mock horror title “PM’s Pal Under Pressure … TORY CHIEF MUST STOP LORDING IT … Bully victim dad’s call”. Here, the Sun pretends that its story enjoys the approval of Elliott Johnson’s dad Ray, although it should be noted that he apparently has not spoken to Cole or Hawkes.

There is even a helpful and supposedly comprehensive graphic showing all the alleged participants in the bullying scandal … except one. Who is missing? Someone who is a family friend of Mark Clarke, who, it has been claimed, leaked details of complaints to him. Step forward newly-ennobled Emma Pidding, whose presence in the affair has been magically airbrushed out, almost as if Clarke had ordered it.

Look who's missing ... so why is that?

Emma Pidding was chair of the National Conservative Convention. She was also responsible in part for the RoadTrip 2015 operation masterminded by Clarke. The inquiry already under way within the Tory Party is understood to have her on its list of those that will be interviewed as part of the process. She is alleged to have been Clarke’s protector. Yet she is absent from the Sun’s supposedly comprehensive article.

As Simon Walters of the Mail On Sunday - who, to his credit, has been on this story from the word go - put it, “Newly ennobled Baroness Emma Pidding, a personal and political ally of Clarke and chairman of his rebranded Road Trip 2020, also faces questions. She arranged for Clarke to be feted by Cameron in public at the Conservative National Convention in July”. But she doesn’t face questions in the Sun.

It is entirely possible that Andrew Feldman has to go; after all, several papers are putting that proposition this morning. And it is equally possible that Harry Cole’s omission of Emma Pidding’s name is down to ineptitude rather than deliberate deception. But the impression that Mark Clarke is wielding influence on the journalistic process with the assistance of his pal is inescapable. And it stinks to high heaven.

Will Tony Gallagher now put Cole on the spot? Sooner or later, he will have to.