Andy Coulson guilty: Coulson’s woes may get worse

Former MSP Tommy Sheridan. Picture: John Devlin

Today the ice cracked underneath him but he may yet have further to fall for the former editor of the News of the World remains charged by the Scottish Crown Office with perjury in connection with the two days of testimony he made during the trial that eventually saw the former MSP sentenced to three years imprisonment.

Asked by Sheridan, who was conducting his own defence, if he knew that the News of the World paid police officers for information Coulson replied: “not to my knowledge” and he later stated: “I don’t accept that there was a culture of phone hacking at the News of the World.”

What brought Coulson, then the Prime Minister’s right hand man, to the witness stand of a Glasgow court room was a story run by the Scottish edition of the NoW in 2004 that alleged Sheridan had taken cocaine, participated in orgies and visited a swinger’s club. Sheridan successfully sued for libel in 2006 and was awarded £200,000 but he was later charged with perjury over his testimony. It was Sheridan’s decision to call Coulson to the witness stand that contributed to his resignation from 10 Downing Street the following month. As Coulson said at the time: “when the spokesman needs a spokesman, it’s time to move on.”

However in 2012 the Glasgow lawyer Aamer Anwar and the Labour MP Tom Watson handed over a dossier to Strathclyde Police that alleged illegal activites at NoW and which led to the launch of Operation Rubicon into allegations of phone hacking, breaches of data protection and perjury. In June 2012 seven officers from Strathclyde Police arrived at Coulson’s home in London at 6.30 am and asked him to accompany them to Glasgow. Despite his protest that: “this is not how its normally works down here” he was forced to accompany them in a an unmarked Hyundai people carrier on the 400 mile drive to Glasgow.

While Coulson was being questioned at Helen Street Police station and before the news that he had been charged with perjury, Gail Sheridan, Tommy Sheridan’s wife, drove past the waiting scrum of photographers and said: “be sure to get his good side”.