How significant is the Prince Harry judgment? It’s about more than Piers Morgan and the Mirror. It exposes a fundamental breakdown at the heart of British society and politics.
Here’s my 4 key takeaways: 🧵
#phonehacking #PiersMorgan #PrinceHarry #Mirror
1. It’s a big win.
Coverage will say he didn’t win every allegation but he was never going to. Given evidence was allegedly concealed, the claim was always going to require a degree of speculation.
It’s not just a win for Harry, there were 100+ claimants - it’s big money /2
2. It’s bad news for a lot of powerful people.
A. The press:
It’s not just Piers Morgan - a raft of individuals across the media were implicated in hacking by the judge.
B. The Police
Also bad for the Met Police - people will want to know why this had to come out through a private court case. Does the famous “cosy relationship” between police and tabloid press continue after Leveson? Why didn’t the police uncover these cases? /4
3. It shows the near total failure of the govt re. the Leveson Inquiry.
A forensic investigation, producing evidence based recs was, almost totally ignored.
Were politicians so scared of the press that they let this sort of thing continue even after given a way to stop it? /5
4. We need to re-assess the power of the press.
Press freedom is vital. Press power is dangerous.
Press isn’t free if it’s controlled by a small group of individuals.
Society isn’t free if a powerful and unaccountable press establishment can exercise so much power /ends.
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Yesterday I spoke to MPs about the fundamental issues with the Rwanda Bill and why it can’t be “saved” by amendment.
Here’s my 4 key problems with the Rwanda Bill 🧵
#RwandaTreaty #HumanRights #Immigration
1. The Constitutional Problem:
The Bill uses legislation to change facts. The very definition of “power is truth”. While parliament has previously asked courts to assume facts unless proven otherwise, it has never legislated to reverse a finding of fact. /2
Parl is institutionally incapable of being an objective fact finder. MPs haven’t been given the evidence scrutinised by the court or the time to consider it. This fundamentally undermines the separation of powers which is why previous govts have always restrained themselves /3
The parts of the #CouttsFiles they don’t want you to see 🧵: They show Farage was let go for commercial reasons.
1. In November 2022 Coutts was concerned about the “reputational risk” of Farage (ie others wouldn’t want to bank with them) but recommended keeping him on anyway: https://t.co/aJwdsufUR6twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
2. The Risk committee was also concerned about “reputational risk” (this is an important business criteria in a service industry. Rich people who don’t like your reputation will go to your competitors). But they agreed to keep him on *while he met the commercial criteria*:
3. Farage’s mortgage with Coutts was keeping him within the commercial criteria. So Coutts essentially made a decision not to give Farage special treatment (ie keeping him on despite not meeting the cc) because doing so might damage the business.