Mr Amess must be having doubts about his leader

Adding to my ever increasing pile of replies from my Member of Parliament is a recent response to an email I sent to David Amess regarding BSkyB and News International.

His reply includes the following:

“I simply cannot understand how the then Labour Government was seemingly unaware of what was happening right under their very noses. It beggars belief, in terms of who was actually running the country! Tony Blair was the then Prime Minister and John Prescott was his deputy for ten years. I hope that the House of Commons will insist that when the inquiry takes place they both appear before it to explain what their relationship was with this organisation and why, when issues were raised about phone hacking, they were seemingly satisfied by the responses given to them by the police. I would expect the same inquiry to ask questions of the Labour Home Secretaries at the time.”

We now know that there as a rather lacklustre investigation by the Metropolitan Police, perhaps understandable in light of accusations of their corrupt practises. Like Mr Amess I would be happy to see ministers from the last Government interrogated, but other than the obvious relationship between politicians and press I am not sure what he expects to unearth. After all, News International very publicly threw its considerable weight behind the Conservative Party in the long run-in to the last General Election.

What will require explaining is how the current Prime Minister ignored warnings when hiring former News Of The World editor, Andy Coulson, as his communications director. Under a cloud before joining Mr Cameron’s team, Mr Coulson left under another when his controversial character came under further scrutiny.

The Conservative Party hold power with the connivance of the Liberal Democrats, sought to buy the election through Lord Ashcroft’s tax-avoiding millions, and had their media strategy mapped out by an ex-editor of a newspaper who thought it acceptable to bribe policemen and hack the phones of celebrities, dead soldiers and murder victims. Has integrity been sidelined in the desperate hunt for power?

If Labour people are at all implicated in any dodgy dealings then I will condemn. However, Mr Amess must be having some doubts about the judgement of those at the top of his party.