‘Codswallop’is the word London mayor Boris Johnson has used to describe new allegations about phone-hacking at the News of the World.
According to Johnson, who spoke at the monthly meeting at the London Assembly yesterday, the new set of allegations are nothing more than a smear campaign by the Labour Party.
The Times reports (link leads to paywall) that Johnson denounced the concerns over phone hacking by journalists as “a Labour witch-hunt”.
The mayor said he was satisfied with the Met Police investigation into the matter.
According to the Times, Johnson, when asked about his conversations with police over the issue, said: ‘To the best of memory, I was satisfied with the police position, which was that no new information had been substantively revealed and therefore nothing more was going to be done. So I don’t think I actually had any conversations.”
He later said: ‘Labour politicians have had five years to discover their principles about this and get outraged about what may or may not have happened.”
Earlier this week Ben Wallace, Tory MP for Lancaster, also attacked Labour over the phone-hack allegations. The Times reported Wallace as saying: ‘Disappointingly Labour has chosen to reignite unproven allegations for party political reasons. They are not interested in addressing the big issues of the day, they are only interested in mud-slinging.”
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