Coulson’s crime

What lies at the heart of the Prime Minister David Cameron’s difficulties over his decision to take on Andy Coulson as his ­director of communications (your report, 26 June)?

It goes deep into the business of winning power in an age of 24-hour, highly competitive news coverage.

Mr Coulson could only have been hired for his expertise in conveying a message to large numbers of undecided voters. That had been proven in his time as an editor for one of the Murdoch empire’s newspapers.

A government tainted perhaps by an aura of privilege and distance from ordinary voters needed the knowledge of someone skilled in the arts of mass persuasion. He was hired to keep the Conservative wing of the coalition government on the right side of public opinion.

He appears to have misled the Prime Minister over his role in “phone hacking” in his previous employment.

But the reasons for that activity in a small section of the press should not be underestimated.

It was not malevolence for its own sake. It was a criminal response to help satiate the appetite of sections of the public for more and more information about the private lives of celebrities and the supposed misdemeanours of politicians.

It was a response in many ways to the cut-throat competition in areas of the “red-top” press. Mr Cameron’s discomfort can be explained not simply because he was misled by Coulson but by the way power is won and exercised in the modern world.

It is questionable whether an Independent Press Standards Organisation will have the strength to combat it.

Bob Taylor

Shiel Court

Glenrothes