James Forsyth James Forsyth

News Corp withdraws its bid for BSkyB

Two things struck me about PMQs today and the Prime Minister’s statement on the forthcoming public inquiry. First, the Prime Minister took a very different approach to Andy Coulson than he did at his press conference last Friday. Today, all the emphasis was on how angry Cameron would be if the assurances given to him turned out to be false.
 
The second was that Cameron rowed away from suggesting statutory regulation of the press. He stressed that he favoured ‘independent’ not ‘statutory regulation’. This should be more acceptable to the press.
 
But, as so often in this scandal, these events have now been overtaken by the dramatic news that News Corp is, ahead of today’s Commons debate on the matter, pulling its bid for the remaining shares in BSkyB.

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