The Rebekah Brooks “Blair email” – and Blair’s response

The phone hacking trial has sprung to life today – and not, as many expected, because of a revelation that might be damaging to the Tories, but because of one that might be damaging to Labour. It has been revealed in an email (below) that Tony Blair spent an hour on the phone advising Rebekah Brooks after the collapse of the News of the World, and expressed a willingness to advise the Murdochs too. Here’s the email:

Tony Blair has since released a statement (helpfully blogged by John Rentoul) which explains his position, which is as follows:

“This was Mr Blair simply giving informal advice over the phone. He made it absolutely clear to Ms Brooks that, though he knew nothing personally about the facts of the case, in a situation as serious as this it was essential to have a fully transparent and independent process to get to the bottom of what had happened. That inquiry should be led by credible people, get all the facts out there and that if anything wrong were found there should be immediate action taken and the changes to the organisation made so that they could not happen again.

“Mr Blair said that if what he was being told by her was correct, and there had been no wrongdoing, then a finding to that effect by a credible Inquiry would be far better than an internal and therefore less credible investigation.”

At the time Blair was advising Brooks, Ed Miliband was publicly calling for her to resign…