Morning Report – July 8th

Predictably, today’s papers are almost entirely devoted to the constantly evolving scandal over phone hacking, the closure of the News of the World, and the imminent arrest of Andy Coulson. Perhaps the most intruiging coverage today comes from fellow News International paper The Times, which devotes much of the paper to the demise of NotW. They admit that a “catastrohphic” collapse in advertising was driven by an online campaign(£) and do nothing to dampen speculation that the Sun will become a seven day paper(£). The Guardian – a paper than has uncovered many of the worst behaviour from the tabloid – suggests that NotW staff fear a conspiracy to keep Rebekah Brooks in a job.

Meanwhile, Nicholas Watt says that Gordon Brown thinks he might have won the last election had the events of recent weeks happened in 2009 – a year before a general election, rather than a year after – as they would have cast doubt on David Cameron’s decision making (by employing Andy Coulson). Perhaps that story is destined to become one of politics’ alternative histories.

This morning at Reuters, in a speech we’ll be covering on LabourList, Ed Miliband will attack the Press Complaints Commission as a “toothless poodle”, arguing that “Its chair admits she was lied to but could do nothing about it. It was established to be a watchdog. But it has been exposed as a toothless poodle. It is time to put it out of its misery. The PCC has not worked. We need a new watchdog”. Strong stuff indeed, which has already been attacked by the PCC itself. Yet Miliband says he still believes in self-regulation of the press. So what would a more robust self-regulating watchdog look like? We’ll hopefully see an answer to that question today.

And as attention turns to Andy Coulson today, Lord Ashcroft has a post at ConservativeHome that attacks Ed Miliband’s own communications chief Tom Baldwin, accusing him of commissioning the “blagging” of bank details whilst he wa working for another Murdoch paper, The Times. Miliband was challenged on his appointment of Baldwin by Kirsty Young on Newsnight last night.