It was all panic at No.10 when the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt and, by extension, David Cameron, were found to be secretly encouraging Murdoch and his BSkyB bid. They immediately sacrificed Hunt's advisor Adam Smith, hoping that people would believe that he was a "lone wolf". That soon began to unravel as every MP and ex-Minister in Westminster pointed out this was not only unbelievable but, under the Ministerial Code which makes Ministers completely responsible for their personal advisor's actions, utterly irrelevant. Now thoroughly alarmed Cameron decided that the "best forum" for finding out the truth was the Leveson Enquiry. Unfortunately that's not true either as Leveson has now forcefully pointed out, making it abundantly clear it was not his inquiry's role to rule if the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has breached the ministerial code. Meanwhile the former BBC chairman Sir Michael Lyons has pointed out that Hunt was obviously in favour of the Murdoch BSkyB bid and assumed that it would go through while an alliance of media groups opposed to Murdoch's takeover claim it was blocked from engaging with Jeremy Hunt and his officials for more than three months, and was only granted a single "sham" meeting with the culture secretary three weeks after he had already given his provisional blessing to the £8bn offer. It is hard to see this as a conspiracy since the chief movers, Jeremy Hunt and David Cameron, are demonstrably stupid, but, unbelievably, that's exactly what it is. Despite all the furore surrounding Murdoch and his seemingly incompetent son, the Tories have still been actively supporting their BSkyB bid. They have tried to hide this in an amateurish sort of way but were soon found out, whereupon they have scrabbled around trying to find a way to dodge the bullett. The "Guardian" today has asked wether the Tories are evil or stupid - the verdict is that they are both.
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