Lines on referred and inferred blame

Andy Coulson having resigned last year as David Cameron’s cypher to Essex Man because of something he had nothing to do with at the News of the World, his self-sacrifice has been trumped by the closure of the News of the World for something of which most contemporary newsroom employees are entirely innocent. In politics, the normal procedure is for people not to resign about something of which they are entirely guilty. So perhaps this key difference between the Fourth Estate and the Greasy Pole is worthy of closer examination.

I think the connecting factor here is what we corporates call referred blame. In fact, both walks of life use this method quite freely to avoid the worst fate either of them can imagine, inferred blame. Thus Coulson resigned twice to present a sort of weaving target that would be hard to follow, let alone hit. Whereas the Screws newsroom has been closed in the hope that its occupants might seem guilty of everything – as opposed to their boss Rebekah Brooks, who had several times expressed shocked outrage that she might be guilty of anything.

In a different tactic applied to the same desired end result, David Cameron has taken complete responsibility for hiring Coulson the perjurous crook, but inferred via lots of top columnists that it was really Osborne’s idea to hire him all along. Here, the trick is to refer journalists directly to a long-time friend and fellow-member of the Bullingdon Club, should they by chance have blame in mind. Were I in Jeremy Hunt’s cement overshoes at the moment, I’d be inclined to keep on taking advice and consulting with the proper bodies from now until Hell freezes over or Newscorp goes bust – whichever comes first. With a boss like David Cameron, it doesn’t do to take a judgement decision which can, as it were, be judged by others later.

Ed Miliband, of course, has inferred that the blame for all this phone hacking lies with the Conservative Party. But he has failed so far to refer to Tony Blair having rung Gordon Brown in 2009 to request that Labour MPs should lay off the hacking scandal. And he hasn’t inferred that his comms head, ex-Newscorp staffer Tom Baldwin, had anything to do with telling Labour MPs the same thing. As with Cameron and Hunt, I think Baldwin might also find himself surplus to requirements in the new post-Murdoch politics. Especially as most Labour MPs find him a referred pain in the neck.

But Nick Clegg is the expert sans pareil when it comes to referred blame. Offering little or no public support to Vince Cable when he announced his intention to “get Murdoch”, Cleggover is now employing his own personal system of inferred credit. He never sucked up to Murdoch, he now says – inferring that Rupert ‘Grotesque’ Murdoch might have been even vaguely interested in him doing so. Give it a week or so, and Slick Nick will be pulling off the trickiest stunt of all: referring blame from Vince to himself for having called Murdoch out in the first place. A few months more, and the LibDem leader will be referring at every opportunity to the fact that he’s never met Murdoch – and thus no contagion can be inferred. One of the more convincing bits of evidence in support of this is Clegg’s Head of Communications James Sorene, a man to whom Rupert Murdoch has never referred, and about whom nothing at all – good or bad – has ever been inferred.