‘Undemocratic, unnecessary, intolerable’… The official verdict on Britain’s state snoopers
The political theorist David Runciman has a nice way of analysing the controversies that regularly blow up in liberal democracies. He divides them into two categories: scandals and crises. Scandals arise all the time in democracies. They generate much heat but little light. And in the end they pass, like ripples of breeze through a ripe cornfield, having made relatively little impact on the body politic. Crises, in contrast, are rarer, and much more important; not only do they generate much heat, but in the end they lead to serious political change.
When the phone-hacking story broke in 2011 many observers thought it was a crisis: all that fuss; closure of the News of the World; journalists in the dock; massive legal cases; Murdoch not only denying control of Sky but apparently on the ropes; David Cameron's toxic mateyness with Rebekah Brooks, not to mention his employment of Andy Coulson; and then the full panoply of the Leveson inquiry with its associated QCs, all with meters running at public expense.
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