Closing in

It was never going to go away. The restrained clinking of champagne flutes in the wake of a CPS statement saying there was “insufficient evidence” that Andy Coulson, plus other former & current employees of the News of the World, were actively involved in illegal phone hacking simply meant that unfriendly media attention would instead focus on claims by Sienna Miller and the alleged involvement of assistant editor Ian Edmondson.

Edmondson was "suspended from active duties" just before Christmas, and shortly after documents became available which, according to the Guardian, apparently prove he asked private investigator Glenn Mulcaire to hack into Miller’s phones in 2005. As you would expect, the paper is orgasmic at the prospect of Edmondson’s ‘fingerprints’ being the means to destroy the NoW’s carefully constructed public defence that hacking was down to a rogue reporter, i.e. Clive Goodman, who was jailed in 2007 along with Mulcaire.

James Robinson, who has been a consistent pursuer on the subject for the Guardian, naturally feels that Edmondson’s suspension puts fresh pressure on Coulson. Edmondson was hired by Coulson, who was editor of the paper between 2003 and 2007, and a part his inner circle. Coulson has consistently maintained that he was unaware of any hacking during that period.