LONDON, (Reuters) – Prime Minister David Cameron, defending his integrity to parliament in emergency session today, said he regretted hiring a journalist at the heart of the scandal that has rocked Britain’s press, police and politicians.
But in two stormy hours of questioning he seemed to rally his Conservative party behind him and stopped short of bowing to demands that he apologise outright for what the Labour leader called a “catastrophic error of judgment” in hiring as a spokesman a former editor of Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World.
Only if Andy Coulson, who has since resigned, should turn out to have lied about not knowing of illegal practices at his newspaper would the prime minister offer a “profound apology”.
But the 44-year-old premier spoke with apparent feeling about his toughest two weeks in power: “You don’t make decisions in hindsight; you make them in the present. You live and you learn — and believe you me, I have learnt,” he said.
“It was my decision … Of course I regret and I am extremely sorry about the furore it has caused. With 20:20 hindsight … I would not have offered him the job.”
Beleaguered but hardly under serious threat of being ousted by his party allies after less than 15 months in office, Cameron defended his actions and those of his staff in dealings with police chiefs who resigned this week over the affair and with Murdoch’s News Corp global media empire.
