David Cameron should be given a break for employing former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his press adviser. He has come under a lot of flak – accused of poor judgment – ever since he took Coulson on four years ago, following the latter’s resignation as editor in response to the phone hacking scandal.
Cameron’s defence is that people screw up, make mistakes and he believes they deserve a second chance, that they shouldn’t be continually hit around the head with their mistake. (I use the word ‘mistake’ loosely.)
Regardless of what I think of his politics, I think the Prime Minister deserves to be applauded for looking beyond the mistake, seeing the qualities of the man, and not caving in to the pressure from his judgmental opponents, as should the Daily Star Sunday for employing Glive Goodman after he was released from prison.
Maybe I am being naive. But just imagine what this world would be like if everyone who ever screwed up was not given another chance and prevented from moving on. Show me the person who has never made a mistake and I’ll show you monkey’s uncle.
With his decision to take on Coulson, I believe that David Cameron demonstrated those values of forgiveness and non-judgementalism that we all hold dear.
Of course, Coulson has not yet been convicted of a criminal offence. But the elusive second chance is a problem for ex-offenders. A lot of employers carry out Criminal Record Bureau (CRB) checks and many of them “run a mile” at the though of employing a convicted criminal. Mark Johnson of the prisoners newspaper wrote in the Guardian last year of the futility of CRB checks:
Look around you in the workplace. Ask yourself how many of the people you really know? How much do you know about their past and even their present? Admit that you know very little, so little that employers are probably safer with an ex-offender who has discussed his past and his new life openly. A clean CRB check gives a sense of security that may be entirely false, but it’s probably the narrowest way of measuring risk.“
Everyone wants to know what background checks David Cameron carried out on Coulson but Johnson argued that it is “not always necessary for an employer to know about the past”. He said that “there are many offenders who will easily slip into a working life and who pose little risk to employers”. And those that can’t should be offered the support they need.
The truth is that Cameron and the Conservative Party are not that unusual, when it comes to giving second chances. According to a survey of 474 employers interviewed by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 51% said that they had knowingly recruited an ex-offender. Let’s hope that his action is an example to the other 49%.
It always seemed to me like when David Cameron was convinced to take on Coulson, it was in the hopes that they might be buying some more News International loyalty with him – and a open channel to Murdoch via Brooks, considering how close she seemed to Coulson.(of course now he seems to be making a point of how unwilling he is to go down for her mistakes, so maybe not)
There probably were mixed motivations in this situation. However, I wanted to focus on how Cameron publicly justified the appointment. Since I don’t have psychic abilities, anything else would be speculation. This is a habit I developed when I was a journalist. Every editor I worked for insisted on the importance of only relying on what people actually say or write.