WAS DAVE STRAIGHT WITH LEVESON?

LAST week we learned that David Cameron is negotiating a seven-figure deal to publish his memoirs — and that he has enlisted the support of Danny Finkelstein, former chief leader writer of The Times. We also discovered that throughout the past five years, the then Prime Minister regularly met Lord Finkelstein (who was of course ennobled by Cameron), in order to brief him confidentially about life in Downing Street in preparation for the writing of his book when the time came. The pair even used an outdated MiniDisc system to record the conversations because they are hard to hack. This raises an awkward question. Why didn’t David Cameron tell the Leveson Inquiry into the Press about this cosy, complicit and irregular arrangement? When he gave evidence in front of Lord Justice Leveson four years ago, Mr Cameron was asked detailed questions about his connections with the Press — and in particular with News International, the newspaper group most seriously implicated in the phone-hacking scandal that prompted the Leveson Inquiry. By then Mr Cameron was meeting and imparting secrets to Finkelstein, a senior executive and political columnist at News International’s flagship British newspaper, The Times. Yet he didn’t breathe a word of this in his evidence. I do not like to call the former Prime Minister a liar. However, consider this: Mr Cameron put his hand on the Holy Bible and promised to tell the court ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’. In the light of that solemn statement, I re-read Mr Cameron’s evidence. He told Leveson that the relationship between politicians and journalists was ‘too close’ — and promised greater ‘transparency’. Yet Mr Cameron didn’t think that Milord Leveson needed to know that he was regularly spilling the beans to Rupert Murdoch’s top political henchman. This shows a straightforward failure of basic personal integrity.