Jeremy hunt

I’m coming to the conclusion that the character of the Cameron government is the inversion of the Brown government. During the dying days of New Labour there was a snarling, socially dysfunctional Prime Minister whom most of the electorate found deeply unappealing. But around Gordon Brown was a group of Cabinet ministers who were really pretty impressive and, well, normal. Alistair Darling, Jacqui Smith, James Purnell, Andy Burnham, Ruth Kelly (remember her?), Alan Johnson, Yvette Cooper: these are all people who it was possible to imagine having  a chat or a drink with in the local pub (or perhaps wine bar).  I could go on. The inverse is true with this government. David Cameron is socially adept and genuinely charming. Whether it is an act or not, he does good normal.

Provided you remember a few simple rules the Expectations Game should be the easiest test to pass in politics. It is not complicated: under-promise and over-deliver. Or, more succinctly, never hype anything. So only fools trail a cabinet reshuffle with the suggestion it will be some kind of transformational shot-in-the-arm for the government. First, doing so concedes that your government is not doing very well at present (otherwise there'd be no need for the reshuffle); second it all-but-demands the press responds to the reshuffle with extra vinegar and cynicism. Is this it? Blimey. Better by far to promise little and actually clear the bar you've set at a modest level for yourself.

Jeremy Hunt has given an interview to House magazine this week which is well worth a read, not least because he deals rather graciously with the failure of his Liberal Democrat colleagues to support him when his back was against the wall over Murdoch. Even though Lib Dem ministers and MPs abstained on a vote calling for him to be referred to the independent adviser on ministers' interests over his contact with News Corp during its takeover bid of BSkyB, the Culture Secretary says: 'I never interpreted it as a personal thing.

One time Tory leader contender (now cabinet dead man walking) Jeremy Hunt faced the suits last night at his first outing in media circles since being dragged through the gutter over his relationship with News Corp.    Pencilled in to speak at the All Party Media Group’s summer drinks at Channel Four, the Culture Secretary tried to put on a brave face in a hostile crowd of media hacks, television types and lawyers. I can only think of rabbits and headlights.    After the softest of digs from host Austin Mitchell MP, who noted that Hunt had been starring in his very own reality TV show for the last few months, Jezza immediately recalled the last time he had been in the building he shared a platform with troubled comedian Jimmy Carr.

A firestorm has torn across Westminster overnight, since Nick Clegg instructed his MPs to abstain from today’s opposition motion demanding that Jeremy Hunt be referred to Sir Alex Allan, the ministerial standards supremo. Numerous Tory backbenchers have taken to the airwaves to condemn their perfidious coalition colleagues. The Mail has the most complete record of the rage. One MP vowed revenge on the liberals. Another described the abstention as ‘an act of war’ before Cameron and Clegg appear before the Leveson inquiry. And Peter Bone said that the Lib Dems ‘are not fit to be in government because they can’t accept collective responsibility.’ Downing Street tells a different tale. ‘There is no split,’ a spokesman said.

Gordon Brown, Sir John Major, Ed Miliband, Harriet Harman, Alex Salmond, Nick Clegg, George Osborne and David Cameron will appear before the Leveson Inquiry next week, for what will be the inquiry's last week of evidence. All eyes, of course, will be on Cameron, who is due to appear on Thursday. He will be embarrassed once again by his past proximity to disgraced News International executives, and his handling of the News Corp BskyB takeover. He previewed his likely answers on BSkyB in an interview with Andrew Marr last week. He said that his intention was for Vince Cable to marshal the bid, but that was scuppered by Cable’s preposterous comments about ‘declaring war’ on the Murdochs, made to Telegraph journalists posing as concerned floozies.

It turns out that there is a minister in the Cameron cabinet who can say sorry. Following the second week of Warsi rule breaking revelations, the Tory party co-chairman has apologised for 'causing any embarrassment' to the government. But Cameron isn't stopping there — she is also being hauled up for potentially breaking the ministerial code: 'There are clearly some lessons for future handling and I have asked Alex Allan, my adviser on ministers' interests, to consider the issues that have been raised with respect to the Ministerial Code and to provide advice to me as rapidly as possible' If the Prime Minister is suddenly taking a tough stance against ministerial wrongdoings, this will lead to the inevitable question — why not Hunt?

Minutes after Jeremy Hunt finished giving evidence at Leveson, Number 10 stated that he would not be referred to the independent adviser on the ministerial code. Hunt would have settled for this result at the beginning of the day. But Labour is sure to point out that the reason Hunt was not referred to him before was to avoid parallel inquiries. So, now that Hunt has given evidence, there’s no bar to Alex Allan investigating.   The evidence presented today contained no smoking gun. But it still created an impression that is deeply damaging to Hunt and his future career prospects. It turns out that Hunt carried on texting James Murdoch, albeit pleasantries, even after he had taken on the quasi-judicial role.

It has become the conventional wisdom in Westminster that Jeremy Hunt’s career will turn on his appearance before the Leveson Inquiry tomorrow. Friends of Hunt have today been arguing that the Inquiry’s focus should be on how he carried out the quasi-judicial role. They are saying that once appointed to it, Hunt behaved — unlike Vince Cable — properly. They concede that Hunt’s texts to Fred Michel were overly familiar. But they maintain that, unlike Adam Smith’s texts, they gave away nothing about the state of the bid process.

So Nick Clegg wants to present himself as anti-Establishment, does he? That’s hardly surprising. After all, the Deputy Prime Minister has ploughed this furrow before now, attacking the ‘vested interests’ that are the banks and the political class. And it’s generally a large part of the Lib Dems’ ‘differentiation strategy’ to come across as insurgents in suits. But Clegg’s comments today are still striking for how far they weaponise this theme and then turn it against the Tories. It’s not just the context of it: with Tory ministers — including Jeremy Hunt — appearing before Leveson this week, Clegg chooses to attack those who ‘bow and scrape in front of Rupert Murdoch’.

Adam Smith’s Leveson ordeal is now over. The testimony we’ve heard from Smith and Fred Michel has left Hunt’s position weaker in one key regard. The crucial allegation is that he misled Parliament when he said that he had not tried to influence the quasi-judicial decision on News Corp’s bid for BSkyB when it was Vince Cable’s responsibility. It is hard to see how this squares with Hunt’s memo to David Cameron in November 2010 warning of the consequences for the media sector of the bid being blocked. Labour is also attacking on the grounds that Hunt should never have been given responsibility for making this quasi-judicial decision given the views expressed in the memo. But I think Hunt is on safe ground here.

Fred Michel’s testimony this morning at the Leveson Inquiry was embarrassing but not devastating. The texts between him and Jeremy Hunt are cringe-worthy but my read is that the Culture Secretary is not in a weaker position than he was this morning. More important for Hunt’s survival prospect is the appearance of his former spad Adam Smith this afternoon. The question is, did Hunt not know of the extent of contact between Smith and Michel? Everything going on at Leveson, though, is a sideshow compared to the economic news and the storm brewing on the continent. On that note, it does seem odd that Nick Clegg is suggesting that the seventy percent of German voters who would like Greece to leave the euro are irrational.