Why Rebekkah Brooks still has a job
So the NOTW closure tells us that Murdoch is still a wily old bastard who values both a) the career of Rebekah Brooks and b) the BSkyB bid more than he values one discredited and reviled newspaper. It’s now the job of all right thinking people to bring both a & b to an end as soon as possible.
I’ve heard it suggested that Brooks must have some serious dirt on the Murdochs to have not been fired yet, but but I actually think there’s a lot of loyalty there, on both sides. I’m sure I’ve read that she’s something of a daughter figure to Murdoch senior, and the events of the past few days bear that out – she’s definitely part of the firm.
No doubt the Murdochs have done enough dirty work in their time to finish the BSkyB bid if it ever made it into the public domain, but I doubt it will, even if Brooks goes. James, and possibly Rupert, will have connived on the cover-up, but I sorely doubt there is anything directly linking them to the hacking itself. They are clever enough to have built plausible deniability into their sordid little racket. Even if she did have something on them, think about Murdoch’s record of business success. You don’t get where he is without being capable of engineering a golden handshake and a workable gagging clause, even for the likes of Brooks.
Remember that Clive Goodman & Mulcaire served time without squealing and have never implicated anyone higher up. The supposition is that News Corp has picked up all of their legal fees and then some. I even wonder whether Coulson working for Cameron wasn’t some sort of compensation for him falling on his sword in the first place, brokered by Brooks herself.
I do think her days are numbered, now that Cameron has sort-of called for it. All indications are that the Murdochs will rage long and hard against the dying of the light, but I reckon that when she goes, she’ll go quietly.
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