News of the World scandal will harm David Cameron

This morning's Guardian breaks what could be a enormous supporting scandal.The paper claims that Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that endangered to reveal evidence of his journalists' repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.In particular, the Guardian says the story "poses difficult questions" for:

• Conservative head David Cameron's director of communications, Andy Coulson, who was second-in-command editor and then editor of the News of the World when, the dormant evidence shows, journalists for whom he was responsible were attractive in hundreds of apparently against the law acts

• Murdoch executives who, although in good faith, have misled a parliamentary select committee, the Press Complaints Commission and the public

• The Metropolitan police, who did not alert all those whose phones were targeted, and the Crown Prosecution Service, which did not pursue all possible charges against News Group personnel

• The Press Complaints Commission, which claimed to have conducted an investigation but unsuccessful to uncover any evidence of against the law activity.

It will also pose a difficult question for David Cameron. How can he possibly continue to employ Coulson?The BBC quotes a spokeswoman for David Cameron as proverb he is "very relaxed" about the story:"The ramping up of this story is ludicrous - this is about a sum complete well after Andy [Coulson] absent the News of the World," she said.But this defence is laughable. The sum was complete well after Coulson absent the paper, but it was complete because of the actions of News of the World journalists while he was editing it.And as Andrew Neil explained on Newsnight the past evening, it is unthinkable that Coulson would not have quizzed his reporters about their methods when they came to him with big stories.An editor has to be able to judge the truth of a story and how defensible it would be in court. The way the story was come by is central to both these questions.The irony is that Cameron may well be better off without Coulson. The Conservatives complete their come back precisely by ceasing to appeal to the baser instincts of Sun readers and courting the liberal middle class voters they have lost over the last two decades.But if he insists on trying to hang on to Coulson, David Cameron's squeaky clean image could well be tarnished.
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