Drama in the House?

So it's finally here: the day I never thought I would see. Around 2.30 BST Rupert and James Murdoch will appear before the Culture Select Committee to answer questions on the hacking and corruption charges now facing Newscorp, followed by Rebekah Brooks an hour later. Live House of Commons Coverage here and apparently this will also be covered by C-Span.

HOC CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT COMMITTEE Tuesday 19 July

Wilson Room
Meeting starts at 2.30pm

Phone-hacking
Witnesses
Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, News Corporation, and James Murdoch, Deputy Chief Operating Officer and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, International News Corporation
Rebekah Brooks, former Chief Executive Officer, News International Ltd

Photo: Murdoch arriving Whitehall earlier today: as Michael Wolff tweets:

A bit Day of the Locust like, crowds descending on Rupert

As everyone is warning, it might be disappointing theatrically: Brooks and the Murdoch's will both be heavily lawyered up and PR air brushed; expect no killer blows or sudden confessions; MPs are not trained examiners either. As Tom Watson, the courageous MP who along with Chris Bryant doggedly pursued the hacking allegations despite being ignored, ridiculed and then threatened has said:

"There is not going to be a killer blow on Tuesday. Expectations are way too high," [Watson] told the Guardian. "We will get the symbolism of parliament holding these people to account for the first time. We will look for facts, and not just offer rhetoric. This story has been like slicing a cucumber, you just get a little bit closer to the truth each time."

Chris Bryant himself has just reiterated on the BBC:

The theatre of [today's appearance] is irrelevant. In the end we've got to get to the bottom of what is a very murky pool. And I tell you Rebekah Brooks was right. We're only half way into that pool at the moment.

However, earlier there is another committee - the Home Affairs committee - could be just as relevant as the two senior policemen who resigned in the last two days are to be quizzed by MPs. There actually could be more fireworks here, since Sir Paul Stephenson has already lobbed a passing shot at the Prime Minister David Cameron over his associations with News International. Live Parliamentary coverage here.

HOC HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE Tuesday 19 July

Grimond Room
Meeting starts at 12pm

Unauthorised tapping into or hacking of mobile communications
Witnesses
Sir Paul Stephenson, Commissioner, Metropolitan Police
Dick Fedorcio OBE, Director of Public Affairs and Internal Communication, Metropolitan Police
Assistant Commissioner John Yates, Specialist Operations, Metropolitan Police

However, whatever happens, it IS a momentous day for another reason

Holding Unaccountable Power to Account: It's A Wonderful Life

I actually find this quite moving, and a Panorama documentary about Murdoch actually bought me to tears last night. This will always be a significant day, because after 42 years, the man who was rumoured to be, and now revealed to be, the most powerful man in Britain is finally having to face its elected representatives.

Murdoch faced a closed, untelevised session of a Lords Committee years ago, which moved to New York for his benefit: but this is completely different occasion. Having suffered, like all of us, four decades of Murdoch's tabloid menace and broadsheet right wing ideology, MPs who previous ran scared of Murdoch (because he could make or break their careers) are now going to face him without fear or favour. As Charlie Brooker put it hilariously, it's like Losing God:

A few weeks ago, Murdoch, or rather the more savage tendencies of the press as a whole, represented God. Fear of God isn't always a bad thing in itself, if it keeps you on the straight and narrow – but politicians behaved like medieval villagers who didn't just believe in Him, but quaked at the mere suggestion of a glimmer of a whisper of His name. You must never anger God. God wields immense power. God can hear everything you say. You must worship God, and please Him, or He will destroy you. For God controls the sun, which may shine upon you, or singe you to a Kinnock. Soon he will control the entire sky....

But then suddenly everything changed. The revelations over the hacking of grieving relatives' voicemails were the equivalent of a tornado ripping through an orphanage. "What kind of God would allow such a thing?" asked the villagers, wading through the aftermath. And they started to suspect He didn't exist.

They thought about the hours and days they'd spent in church, saying their prayers, rocking on their knees, whipping themselves with knotted rope, or flying round the world to address one of God's conferences, and they grew angry.

One by one they stood up to decry God. "He's a sod," said one. "No he's not, he's a monster," said another. Eventually they formed the consensus view that he was a sodmonster.

For my generation (born in the 60s) not only has Murdoch dominated our entire adult lives in terms of news, but his model of the media has disfigured politics. Of my college friends in the 80s, many got siphoned off into the financial services to earn lots of money in entirely unproductive asset bubbles. But a large number also got sucked into journalism, PR, media.  I know my journalists - the mother of my children was a very senior BBC News executive - and while all of them were excellent, clever, committed people: I knew something was wrong.

I'd often ask TV presenters or news investigators why, given their passions and interest in politics, they didn't go into politics themselves, and become and MP. Generally, the answers were awkward. They couldn't say it, but they knew they would earn less money, and the route - being selected and then elected by the people - would be long, arduous and unpredictable. But one senior figure was bluntly honest with me:

Why would I become an MP, Peter. They have no power.

So that's part of the problem here, a system dysfunction that goes beyond the Newscorp empire to the wider world of the blogosphere. Pundits and opinion writers make much more noise, more money, and an easier route to political influence than the normal political careers. I have no problem with it as such - except this one anomaly. Politicians are ultimately accountable for their power - at the ballot box. As former Home Secretary Jack Straw has just said

Parliament should be the cockpit of the nation and not the newspapers

Today it looks like it will be.

So let's celebrate today whatever happens. The people's representatives are finally confronting the unaccountable 'state within a state' which Newscorp is. Whatever the outcome, I can't help think of It's A Wonderful Life and the way George Bailey stands up to Henry F Potter.  The confrontation isn't direct. Indeed, at the end of the movie, the grasping monopolist - who would have turned Baileys hometown into a sleazy tabloid Pottterville - basically just disappears. The collective goodness of the community, which saves Bailey, makes Potter irrelevant. He keeps his riches. There is no denouement. Potter just fades away into moral oblivion and narrative insignificance.

This is how I guess the Murdochs will eventually depart, not with a bang but a whimper.

Below the fold I'll sketch the key dramatis personae in the hour before the Culture Committee, and also - using the UPDATE system to they're all timestamped - I'll be blogging as much as beneath that about what is sure to be another rollercoaster day in the Fall of the House of Murdoch Saga. But for quicker updates, and a much more comprehensive coverage, do go to the Guardian Live Blog, or - for a slightly different perspective - the Telegraph

Do share you own links, pimp your own diaries (I'm ignoring the US developments today: the Anomaly has already been following up the scandals at the Newscorp subsidiary NewsAmerica) and generally share your thoughts in what Chris Bryant has called:

One of the biggest scandals that we've known in British political history for the last 75 years.