Business | Media

Maria Miller brought down by the people, not a press witch-hunt

 
Maria Miller resigned today Photo: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire
Roy Greenslade
23 April 2014

Maria Miller inevitably had to go. What was baffling was that she and David Cameron dared for so long to ignore public opinion.

She was so obviously damaged goods, so the Prime Minister’s investment of political capital in support of her showed a lamentable lack of judgment. He was stating the obvious when he said that he — not the press, not the people — decides who should be in his Cabinet. In so doing, he seemed to forget that it is the people who decide whether he should even have the right to form a Cabinet.

Leave aside for a moment the controversial catalogue of mis-steps since it was revealed Miller had claimed parliamentary expenses for the mortgage and upkeep of a house in Wimbledon, where her parents lived. They included her unhelpfulness towards the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Kathryn Hudson, and her rudeness in making a 32-second apology to fellow MPs.

Let’s consider instead her record since she was appointed Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in December 2012. (She had a second role as Minister for Women and Equalities, and I have no quibble with that).

In her culture and media post, her first and greatest task was to deal with the post-Leveson fallout by deciding how to deal with creating a new press regulator. In fact, Cameron preferred to give that job to his Cabinet Office minister, Oliver Letwin. It was he, not Miller, who came up with the Royal Charter idea to underpin regulation. People who attended the early meetings about that said Miller’s input was marginal.

Once the charter was in place and most newspaper publishers had rejected the idea by setting up their own body, the Independent Press Standards Organisation, Miller appeared on TV and, in an infelicitous interview with Andrew Marr, was lured into admitting that the charter was redundant.

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In other words, she clumsily conceded that a major plank of her own Government’s policy, one she had extolled the month before, was worthless after all. She looked and sounded weak.

Her grasp on other areas of her brief was also tenuous. Her very able junior colleague, Creative Industries Minister Ed Vaizey, has made a better fist of his responsibilities.

Although Miller is joint chair with Business Secretary Vince Cable of the Creative Industries Council, Vaizey put it on the map. For instance, when the council launched a website in January to co-ordinate industries, Vaizey was at the forefront of the publicity push.

Miller did not rise to the challenge of a job that should be seen as a training ground for higher office. Her predecessor, Jeremy Hunt, sprang from there to become Health Secretary.

In Cabinet terms, the culture and media department is a junior ministry. But Miller did not show the kind of energy, passion and skills that won Hunt his promotion. Similar elevation for her was never on the cards.

So why, given the toxic nature of the expenses scandal surrounding her, did Cameron stick by Miller? He may have felt he could see off the press along with many of his grumbling, anxious Conservative party members.

But he failed to heed that it was the public — in opinion polls, letters to newspapers and online comment threads — who did not back his decision to retain Miller. This was not a press witch-hunt; it was the people who brought Miller down.

Roy Greenslade is Professor of Journalism, City University London, and writes a blog for the Guardian