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A poacher turned gamekeeper in a sharp suit: Andy Coulson has discovered that it is harder to leave an old life behind than he would wish.
The former News of the World editor appeared before the Culture Select Committee yesterday to assure MPs that when it came to bugging, hacking and other excesses of the tabloid jungle, he was not to blame.
Like Manuel in Fawlty Towers when the plot unravels, he knew "No-thing".
This amounted to saying that a culture of misrule and lax financial controls had presided at his newspaper during a five-year reign.
Faced with the awkward choice of looking like a knave or a fool, Mr Coulson gritted his teeth and chose the latter. Really, he couldn't do anything else. In this affair, knowledge implies collusion.
Supreme ignorance is a tricky contention for an editor who controls a major scoop-driven newspaper. At the very least he might have been curious about the modus operandi of his investigative staff.
As a shrewd Plaid Cymru MP pointed out as he waved one of those forgettable "Harry 'n' Chelsy" stories at the ex-editor, it is hard to see how anyone could have thought it didn't come from phone hacking.
What we have here is our very own version of the US police and thieves drama The Wire. You are no one unless you can claim to have had your mobile calls monitored by some "researcher" digging for stories or, at least, printable nuggets.
"There's more evidence that my phone was hacked than John Prescott's phone was hacked," Mr Coulson told a bemused committee.
That may turn the tables but it really does not clinch the argument.
We Wire aficionados know full well that everyone is bugging everyone else throughout the proceedings.
In a culture of hacking, it's rarely obvious when to start abiding by the rules of discretion. Mr Coulson wisely didn't want to pursue this logic too far either.
Things had gone "badly wrong", he has conceded; a slalom of events which ended in the arrest of his royal reporter Clive Goodman and his own departure from his job.
Shortly afterwards, he was hired by David Cameron as communications chief - and has now become a trusted member of the inner team.
Indeed, as I chanced through Conservative Office last week, I saw Mr Coulson and the chief strategist Steve Hilton exchanging views in the little glass office where the real business gets done.
The body language said it all - Mr Coulson waved airily. Mr Hilton looked his usual shambolically agreeable self.
Andy C is part of Dave's Cosa Nostra and he is highly unlikely to end up as, as one Tarantino character puts it surveying a corpse, "an employee I had to let go".
Why does Mr Cameron depend on his spin doctor so much? Because in modern politics, that role is as crucial - and often more so - than any other as a party prepares for power.
Mr Cameron can make a thousand cleverly crafted speeches and dream up policy initiatives with his impressive young brains trust. But he will be remembered for the mot juste - or the image not so juste.
So when he was photographed cycling to work with his car and driver cruising behind him, it made more impact on Tory focus groups than anything else he had said or done.
Mr Cameron recognised in the newspaper veteran a feel for the impact of stories and headlines his team lacked.
It's a fair chance that if some Conservative catchphrase has irritated you by its gleeful repetition, it was honed or magnified by Mr Coulson.
Journalistic imports into politics tend to be major successes or instant flops. So Alastair Campbell was very good for Tony Blair - before he was very bad. He, too, helped define the insurgent party's image, its brand and its purpose.
His own very tabloid manner of sneering at opponents further demoralised a fractured Conservative Party and built up a sense that a Blair-led Labour Party was unstoppable. Which it duly turned out to be.
His New Tory equivalent is a cooler customer: polite, witty and a tad slippery.
He fits well into the relaxed alpha male vibe of the Cameron team and isn't above using his Essex-boy background to differentiate himself from the posh lot around him.
Like his boss, he's a touch vain about his appearance: you don't have to look like a former member of a boy band to work in Camp Cameron but it helps.
Whether he's counselling his boss on the projection of "Broken Britain" or cultivating the image of "Angry Dave" to help shake off Cameron's tendency to come across as an irksome Etonian smoothie, he's managed to "put the C1/C2 oomph into our message", says one insider, eyeing a precious voting demographic.
The association with tabloid excesses and blind eyes turned to illegal practices is, however, a more serious matter for Mr Cameron than he wants to admit.
It was foolish to say that he was "relaxed" about the matter: a very stupid phrase used by politicians who are very unrelaxed about something. George Osborne says the same about the investigation into his expenses. QED.
If the law has been broken, as it was in the Goodman case, that is not a relaxing matter. Mr Cameron compounded the impression by talking about Mr Coulson deserving "a second chance" - which made him sound more culpable than he says he is. (He also spoke of him doing his job today "in an upright manner" - which sounded pompous when Mr Coulson is a communications boss, not an archbishop).
This affair won't prove fatal because the man under fire is deemed essential to the Tory war effort and is well liked and respected among his peers in Central Office.
Unless any crushing new facts emerge proving complicity, the Guardian has not clinched the case that he had direct knowledge of the bugging operations.
Nonetheless, Conservatives must beware falling into the trap of their Blairite predecessors: namely the habit of automatically defending anyone or anything useful to their case without due scrutiny.
Mr Coulson, to my mind, does not deserve to be a sacrificial lamb. The evidence does not support it, even if his account leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to full disclosure.
From now on, though, he must be particularly scrupulous in the way he pursues his job and his party's goals.
Any further question marks will cast doubt on the decision to hire and defend him.
Other people's baggage, as leaders learn over time, is very easy to acquire - and an awful lot harder to put down.
Reader views (1)
Ms McElvoy, is Coulson innocent in your view? If he is (in your view), leave the guy alone and go chase McMitty and his band of New Labour halfwits, chancers and charlatans.
- Ted, London, 22/07/2009 13:35
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