David Cameron is a pretty straight sort of guy – but now he has to prove it - Telegraph.co.uk (blog)

The Prime Minister working in the Cabinet room, 2010 (Photo: Andrew Parsons)

I do not believe that David Cameron is venal. Unlike Tony Blair, Cameron has not used access to the machinery of power to facilitate the kind of covert exchange between donor and politician that was such a feature of the Blair regime. There have been no distorted decisions on public policy as a reward for party donations, no marketisation of public honours, no business favours for foreign tycoons in return for political or financial support.

Nor have David and Samantha abused their occupancy of Downing Street for naked financial gain, as did Tony and Cherie. All this is well and good, and one would expect nothing less from a Conservative prime minister.

Nevertheless, these are early days, and it is troubling to report that a smell is starting to emerge from 10 Downing Street. It is comparatively minor when compared to the stench of the Blair years. But it is unmistakable, and it is gathering strength.

The first cause of this noxious odour is Andy Coulson, the Downing Street director of communications, whose power inside Number 10 is indicated by the fact that he works from the office formerly occupied by Gordon Brown. Before going to work for Cameron in 2007, Coulson was the editor of the News of the World.

He worked for seven years at this famous British institution, three as deputy editor and a further four as editor. But catastrophe struck. His royal reporter, Clive Goodman, was caught hacking into the mobile phones of members of the royal household. When Goodman was sentenced to jail, his editor resigned. Coulson made plain that he personally had known nothing of what Goodman was doing. This was "an exceptional and unhappy event in the 163-year history of the News of the World, involving one journalist", to quote from the newspaper's editorial on the weekend after Goodman was jailed.

It will be noted that this version of events casts Andy Coulson in an abnormally virtuous light. Guiltless himself – indeed, the wronged party – he nevertheless felt compelled to resign because of wrongdoing that had gone on under his watch. Recent British public life provides few comparable examples of self-sacrifice, though Lord Carrington's decision to hand in his resignation as foreign secretary after the Argentine invasion of the Falklands in 1982 perhaps falls into the same category of unsullied and high-minded honour.

Of course, there have always been concerns about the Coulson story. Why, for example, have a number of public figures who have brought cases against the News of the World been rewarded with substantial payments on condition they took matters no further? But right up to last Christmas, the Downing Street director of communications manfully stuck to his story.

This week, however, the Coulson version started to come apart. It emerged that Clive Goodman may well not have been a rogue reporter after all – a News of the World journalist called Ian Edmondson has been suspended from the staff following the "serious allegation" that he was involved in phone-hacking during the time that Coulson was editor.

This allegation can be made as a result of a case brought against the News of the World by the actress Sienna Miller. The evidence suggests that Mr Edmondson – who was news editor of the paper – commissioned a private investigator to hack into Miss Miller's private phone. Court documents indicate that this was a huge-scale operation, because Coulson's News of the World was also targeting Miss Miller's mother, her publicist, one of her friends, as well as her partner Jude Law and his personal assistant.

Supposing that these allegations are true – and it is only fair to stress that they are far from proven – then matters now look very bleak for Coulson. Edmondson was his news editor, and certainly no rogue reporter. So at best Coulson would appear either incredibly stupid or improbably naïve. Though I have never spoken to the man, I am assured by those who know him that he is neither of these things. To express the matter plainly, Coulson's claim that he knew nothing makes no sense to anybody with experience of how newspapers work.
However, it is not just Coulson who is in trouble. The situation is grim for the Prime Minister. It was he who (on the advice of George Osborne) personally hired the former News of the World journalist, and in the knowledge of the circumstances in which he had left the paper. Cameron needs to ask his adviser some questions and he must ask them now. This situation is very serious because it has the potential to do grave damage to the Prime Minister's reputation not just for sound judgment, but also for probity.

The second reason for the smell now emerging from Downing Street is Cameron's handling of last year's expenses scandal. At the time, he was commended for his swift reaction to the crisis. Once in office, the Prime Minister – and this is very understandable for a man who has many more urgent matters to attend to – has allowed the problem to slip.

The result has been that Tory backbenchers now feel at liberty to campaign for the restoration of a version of the old, bent system that brought British politics into such disrepute two years ago. This week, Sir George Young, leader of the Commons, openly criticised the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa), the statutory regime that has replaced the bankrupt system of self-regulation. The Prime Minister himself has warned that Ipsa may be replaced.

If is easy to see why Cameron feels the need to sanction back-bench resentment against the tough new standards regime. He knows that many of his policies, particularly those forced on him by the Coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrats, are deeply unpopular with Tory MPs. So he is trying to ease life for his critics in other ways. Tony Blair as prime minister entered into just the same Faustian pact. Party whips encouraged Left-wingers hostile to the New Labour project to exploit the soft Commons expenses regime in return for a quiet life.

There was a justification for this, as for so much else New Labour skulduggery. For progressives, virtuous ends can justify immoral means. Lying about weapons of mass destruction can seem acceptable because it legitimises the removal of a murderous dictator. Tolerating sleaze is a minor crime if it helps sustain a progressive government.

It is much more difficult for Conservatives because we are so much more uncertain about human nature and its capacity to change society for the better. This leads us to concentrate on smaller things which we personally know we can deliver: truth-telling, personal decency, courtesy, obeying the law. This difference in attitude in matters of personal conduct is arguably the greatest difference between the progressive and the conservative cast of mind. It is time that David Cameron, who knows all of this perfectly well, returned to these fundamental verities.