'George Osborne, the new Macavity'

John Rentoul in the Sunday Independent has finally said what many knew and few would say publicly, that it was George Osbourne who recommended Andy Coulson to David Cameron.

John writes 'Oh yes. George Osborne. Remember him? Not been seen much in public recently. He's probably locked in one of those rooms off the corridors of power, doing the brilliant strategising for which he is renowned. His absences; his reputation for thinking ahead; and his importance to his party's economic credibility – he seems to be turning into a Tory Gordon Brown. Among the many paradoxes of politics last week was Brown's sudden visibility, complaining in the Commons about his own failure as Prime Minister to order an inquiry into the whole murky Murdoch business: "My desire to have a judicial inquiry", he said, "was opposed by the police, opposed by the Home Office and opposed by the Civil Service."

Meanwhile, Osborne has been doing the old Macavity routine, about which the Tories used to enjoy taunting Brown when he was Chancellor. Osborne has even been rather quiet, I am told, in the series of crisis meetings in Downing Street. Out of embarrassment, no one has pointed out that it was his genius idea to hire Andy Coulson, the former editor of News of the World, as Cameron's head of communications in the first place. But everyone knows it.

Which was why it was significant that the Prime Minister was so keen to "take full responsibility" for hiring Coulson in his emergency news conference on 8 July: "The decision to hire him was mine and mine alone," he said. "I took the decision – as I say, my decision, my decision alone – to give him a second chance... That was a decision I took, a decision I will be held responsible for... I'm responsible for the decisions I take, the people I employ, the government I run. The buck stops right here."

We got the point. The real point, I understand, is to "protect George". Cameron has realised that Osborne's reputation is terribly important to the Government. Just as Brown became ironclad because his stewardship of the economy was so successful – if you can remember that far back – and unsackable.

Osborne went to lots of parties and meetings with News International people too, but the Chancellor must be protected from the Murdoch contagion, so that the markets will continue to have confidence in his handling of the economy. This is an unexpected effect of the phone-hacking scandal, binding the coalition even tighter to Osborne's policy on the deficit – a policy in which even the most unpolitical member of a focus group has a strong and personal interest.'Any source