卡梅伦演讲

卡梅伦演讲 LONDON - It was Prime Minister David Cameron’s turn to battle for his reputation, and potentially even his job, in the House of Commons yesterday in an appearance to address the phone hacking scandal that has convulsed Britain. Tweet Be the first to Tweet this!ShareThis And when the daylong political street fighting with the opposition Labor Party was done, he appeared to have at least steadied support within his own party and, perhaps as important, within the ranks of the Liberal Democrats, his nervous partners in the coalition government. The confrontation in the House of Commons - coming a day after appearances by Rupert and James Murdoch, whose News of the World, a now defunct newspaper, has been at the heart of the scandal - capped a difficult week in which the politically agile prime minister appeared to lose his normally assured demeanor, allowing Labor to get ahead of him in putting an end to the Murdochs’ bid for Britain’s top satellite television company. Cameron flew back from a shortened trade trip to Africa on Tuesday and worked late into the night preparing for the showdown over revelations about the tabloid that have exposed cozy relations among the press, politicians, and the police, and which crystallized into the most serious crisis of credibility and confidence of his 15 months in office. As the eight-hour Commons debate ended, the prime minister, 44, appeared to have done enough to quiet the worst anxieties in his Conservative Party, whose most powerful backbench group gave him a desk-banging thumbs up. Several Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, emerged from the session to say that the emphasis should be on reforms to rid Britain of the excesses of its tabloids, and not on efforts to topple Cameron, unless there are new disclosures that implicate him in efforts to stifle the police investigation of the issue or mislead Parliament. Only a week ago, the Liberal Democrats seemed to be edging closer to an alternative compact with the Labor Party that could have threatened the government’s survival. Still, Cameron appeared to have only stalled the Labor onslaught that has sought to link him to the scandal through his close ties to Murdoch and to two former editors of News of the World, one of whom served for nine months as Cameron’s communications chief. After more than two weeks during which Ed Miliband, the Labor leader, outflanked Cameron at virtually every turn, the prime minister appeared to hit his stride, coupling incensed denials of personal wrongdoing in the affair with a new, hard-edged attitude toward his former media chief, Andy Coulson. Showing an edge of bitterness toward a man he was describing only days ago as a friend, he said that “with 20-20 hindsight and all that has followed, I would not have offered the job, and I expect that he wouldn’t have taken it.’’Continued... “You live and you learn,’’ he added, “and, believe you me, I have learned.’’ Cameron also aggressively took on Miliband, saying that all the accusations now under investigation within the Murdoch newspapers took place when Labor was in power and that the Labor governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had taken no action on evidence that serious wrongdoing had occurred. He also said that Labor’s ties with Murdoch and his executives, and the party’s pursuit of Murdoch’s political favor, were more extensive than his own. “I can assure the House that I’ve never held a slumber party or seen her in her pajamas,’’ Cameron said, referring to Rebekah Brooks, a onetime editor of News of the World, who became one of the scandal’s highest-ranking casualties when she resigned as chief executive of News International, the paper’s parent company, late last week. The jibe referred to a gathering that Brown’s wife held in 2008 at the prime minister’s official country retreat, which British newspaper accounts have said was attended by Brooks; Murdoch’s wife, Wendi; and his daughter Elisabeth. A Daily Mail account said guests were told to bring their pajamas “for the sort of sleepover usually favored by teenage girls.’’ Cameron’s defense - and his continuing vulnerability - rested on two potentially explosive issues. First was why he hired Coulson only months after Coulson’s 2007 resignation as News of the World editor, then took him to Downing Street, in the face of a flurry of private warnings, after the Conservatives won the May 2010 general election. The Coulson hiring had raised eyebrows among many in the Conservative Party and elsewhere because of the innuendo that enveloped the newspaper after the jailing in 2007 of the paper’s former royal correspondent and a private investigator for tapping the voice mail messages of Prince William. Coulson has adamantly denied any knowledge of the phone hacking or any wrongdoing, as have all other top editors and executives at the Murdoch papers. The second issue that led to waves of hostile questioning from Labor was what role Cameron played in the government’s initial decision to support Murdoch’s $12 billion bid for British Sky Broadcasting, Britain’s most lucrative satellite television network. The question was raised, in part, by Downing Street’s acknowledgment last week that Cameron had met 26 times with Rupert Murdoch and other executives and editors of his British media properties in little over a year in office. Those encounters, an official diary showed, exceeded all of Cameron’s meetings with other, non-Murdoch media executives, and were still more striking for the fact that the list included no officials from the BBC, Britain’s powerful state broadcasting network, or editors of non-Murdoch newspapers. ? Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.