Who caved?

For years, Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, reportedly vowed to “expose all their lies and manipulation to the public, to get a public apology for all of us and to get some justice” by pursuing Rupert Murdoch’s London tabloids for their alleged use of phone hacking and unlawful information gathering by journalists and private investigators.

Now he has won a remarkably full public apology and an as-yet-undisclosed financial settlement just as a trial was about to begin. But at the same time, Harry and his co-claimant, former MP Tom Watson, have assured Murdoch and his most senior lieutenants that they won’t face what they perhaps most feared: a damaging public accounting for their actions.

But there is an alternative version. After a prolonged game of chicken, was it Murdoch who caved and funded a wildly expensive settlement to avoid a potentially embarrassing trial? While Murdoch was mingling with the Donald Trump oligarchy in the Capitol Rotunda on Monday he already knew what he was facing, having likely already given a green light to the settlement.

The fact is that the reportedly huge sum is only part of the total cost. Harry and Watson were the last of more than 1,300 victims who settled with the defendants, known as News Group Newspapers (NGN). Exactly how much those settlements cost in total compensation and legal fees is not known, but in a statement, Harry and Watson said it was more than 1 billion pounds.

While several former Murdoch journalists pleaded guilty to phone hacking at News of the World, NGN has consistently denied that The Sun was involved, even though it settled cases involving the daily tabloid. Now it has been forced to drop that pretense by admitting in its apology that The Sun was active in “unlawful activities carried out by private investigators.”

NGN said in a statement on Wednesday: “Today, our apology to the Duke of Sussex includes an apology for incidents of unlawful activities carried out by private investigators working for The Sun, not by journalists, during the period 1996–2011.

“There are strong controls and processes in place at all our titles today to ensure this cannot happen now. There was no voicemail interception on The Sun.”

Harry and Watson see things differently. “The rule of law must now run its full course. Prince Harry and Tom Watson join others in calling for the police and Parliament to investigate not only the unlawful activity now finally admitted, but the perjury and cover-ups along the way,” read their Wednesday morning statement. “It’s clear now this has occurred throughout this process, including through sworn evidence in inquiries and court hearings, and in testimony to Parliament, until today’s final collapse of NGN’s defence.

“Today the lies are laid bare. Today, the cover-ups are exposed. And today proves that no one stands above the law. The time for accountability has arrived.”

NGN has conceded a lot, but it did not concede any ground on allegations of perjury or of an extensive cover-up of evidence. Its statement said, “It must also be stressed that allegations that were being made publicly pre-trial, and indeed post-settlement, that News International destroyed evidence in 2010–11, would have been the subject of significant challenge at trial.