Tom Watson and the Deathly Hacking (part 200)

By Grace Fletcher Hackwood / @msgracefh

(Come on. Someone was going to do it. And as LabourList’s chief Overextended Metaphor correspondent, I felt I should step up. Also: this is possibly the first ever LabourList post to come with a spoiler alert.)

Ways in which the final Harry Potter film is like the phone-hacking saga:

1. It’s the biggest thing around. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt 2 broke box office records with its midnight premiere alone; Hackgate (a word I like, if only because it means if I am ever embroiled in a proper scandal, someone will have to come up with a more original name for it) has dominated the news for weeks. That’s not to say it’s the most important thing out there. Over the last week – just to give a couple of examples – the Immigration Advisory Service was forced into administration by the government’s legal aid cuts, leaving potentially thousands of vulnerable people unsure of where to find representation; Southern Cross’s 750 homes were finally turned over to their landlords; 10 million people in East Africa are facing the world’s worst food crisis…You’ll have heard about all of it, but when it comes to getting to the top of the political agenda, they all stand about the same chance as any other kids’ film that opened over the weekend.

2. It feels like a game-changer. This is a little difficult to understand if you’re a little older and don’t have any children, but if you’re, say, eighteen or younger, Harry Potter has been around for literally all of your childhood. Even if you weren’t a fan, didn’t live with the characters and know them better than some family members, they were indisputably part of the culture you grew up in. The cycle of releases of the books and films dictated what else went on. And if someone explained to you that, prior to 1997, writing children’s books was no way to make money, you might find that hard to believe.

The hope now has to be that, a generation from now, it will be just as difficult to explain that, widely hated though he was, one Australian media tycoon held the world’s politicians in thrall. “Rupert Murdoch?” these future generations will exclaim in wonder. “The guy who was famous for employing people who hacked into a dead girl’s voicemail? Prime Ministers and party leaders used to invite him to their house and fly across the world to see him? Why, these days, anyone involved with any enterprise he ever owned would be unelectable and shunned!”

“Why, yes,” you will nod, sagely. “It was a dark time.”

A little optimistic? Yeah. While typing the previous paragraph I was muttering ‘ohpleasepleasepleaseohpleaseplease’ like a hex. I only said it ‘feels like’ a game-changer. It’s going to take a lot more than this to deal with Fox News. And don’t get me started on Pottermore.

3. Bellatrix Lestrange is Rebekah Brooks as a goth. Look.

4. Underdogs and iconic British actors triumph over evil. Voldemort was ultimately brought down by the persistence of one geeky kid and his friends, with a little help from a double agent played by Alan Rickman. The hacking practices of News of the World journalists were exposed by Tom Watson MP and fellow backbenchers, along with Hugh Grant wearing a wire. The message is clear: if you want to take on the forces of darkness, you’re gonna need to put on glasses and call a friend who’s been in Love Actually. (In fact, let’s give it a try. I’m off to Specsavers – meet me at Fox News in an hour. Bring Keira Knightley.)

5. The body-count is astounding. The scenes in the second half of Deathly Hallows pt 2 are more corpse-strewn than the last scene of Hamlet. Dragons, fire, one terrifyingly muscular snake and a series of pitched magical battles kill off one longstanding character after another – BOOM! Goodbye, teen wizard! WHAM! Sayonara, scary teacher! BAM! Have that, character who hadn’t appeared in this particular film up to this point but whose demise is clearly very significant!

And that’s a little like how the last week and a half have played out. We – and probably Rebekah Brooks – thought the initial wipe-out of News of the World might be it for a while; but then Coulson was arrested (BOOM!), Brooks resigned and was arrested (WHAM! BAM!), last night the Met police commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson resigned (KAPOW!) and by the time you read this there could well have been enough further explosive career endings to use up a whole Batman strip of sound effects.

Ways in which the final Harry Potter film is nothing like the phone-hacking saga:

The Harry Potter films are now over. With the Murdochs and Brooks up before the culture, media and sport select committee on Tuesday, Hackgate is, emphatically, to be continued…