My Name Escapes Me

To the Leveson Inquiry to witness the PM's testimony about his manifold contact with the generals of the Murdoch Empire.

Perhaps it was unfortunate lighting in Court 73 but throughout Cameron resembled an apoplectic beetroot as he feigned a casual air in the face of the relentlessly inquisitorial Mr Jay QC.

Cameron's extensive legal preparation was very apparent just by his vocabulary unless he often uses words such as 'recused', 'provenance' and 'elision'. What also came across was his much trumpeted crusade when first he became Tory leader for "a new politics" was never genuine. His seduction of media companies and individual journalists was not just extensive but serial in its scale - 1,400 meetings, meals and interviews in four years.

But in the great swathe of communication there were some individual details of bowel emptying embarrasment.The text from Rebecca Brooks prior to his 2009 conference speech captured an intimacy even complicity which could not be diminished whatever Dave said. ("I am so rooting for you tomorrow not just as a proud friend but because professionally we’re definitely in this together! Speech of your life? Yes he Cam!"). And Mr Jay's prolonged focus on the Brooks' was all the more poignant as they had appeared in court the previous day charged with the emminently imprisonable offence of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

So naturally he played down his contact with them, couldn't recall how often these weekend pub chums met in wellies splattered with the Oxfordshire mud. His memory was extra-ordinary partial; at times it seemed he couldn't remember if he could remember. His lawyers, no doubt, had advised him not to admit to that which he did not need to. But lawyers are only expert in the narrow confines of legal argument. It may not occur to them how damaging it is to a PM's integrity to present such a selectively fallible memory.

He also suggested before handing Jeremy Hunt the role of arbiter on the BSkyB bid they had never even discussed it. This £8Bn deal was easily the biggest in media history, and Hunt was Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport - that part of Cameron's testimony was barely credible.

But this lack of frankness was still not the most glaring ommission. Cameron had established this inquiry himself yet found no time to show any statesmanlike qualities, to rise above the hurly burly and share his strategic overview of the media's future with His Honour, Lord Leveson. When Cameron could not resist having a pointless swipe at Gordon Brown it showed him for what he is: strong on political instinct, weak on political judgement.