Liberal Vision

Rupert Murdoch: I liked it so much that I bought your country’s legal system

Today’s Guardian’s sensational expose of the Murdoch empire’s subversion of the rule of law raises a shedload of issues. The paper suggests that this poses “difficult questions” for:

David Cameron and his comms director Andy Coulson (who was line manager for many of the journos behaving in this illegal fashion)…

…Various arms of the British state from the Press Complaints Commission to the CPS, who have clearly been supine, incompetent or both…

…and “Murdoch executives who, albeit in good faith, have misled a parliamentary select committee, the Press Complaints Commission and the public .”

Murdoch himself doesn’t seem to be in The Guardian’s firing line. He now appears to be some form of weird Kaiser Soze mythical beast rather than a human being who is legally responsible for his - and his company’s - actions.

Fortunately, Rupert Murdoch is an American citizen and our government has entered into an extradition arrangement with the United States whereby we speed up the judicial process. Any British citizen wanted  by the States can be handed over to the US authorities without the need for a prima facie case being established on this side of the pond. And because we have a “special relationship” with the USA, I would have thought this applies the other way round.

 Oh, it doesn’t? 

Ooops.