Privacy: the high politics of low gossip | Editorial (Guardian)

Who could have predicted a constitutional crisis between parliament and courts
provoked by a footballer

Who, even a week ago, could have predicted a constitutional crisis between
parliament and courts provoked by a footballer who played away? Within an hour
of a judge refusing to lift an injunction barring the naming of the sportsman
at the heart of an anonymous privacy injunction, a Liberal Democrat
backbencher, John Hemming, stood up in the Commons chamber yesterday and named
Manchester United's Ryan Giggs as the mystery claimant. Then, last night, the
high court refused to overturn the now undermined injunction.

The case is, on the face of it, not a terribly attractive one for arguing
either the cause of freedom of speech or for the supremacy of parliament.
According to the original judgment, the matter involved a strong suggestion of
blackmail by the former Big Brother star, Imogen Thomas, who had been trying
to persuade Giggs to pay her to keep quiet about a relationship the two were
alleged to have had. Ms Thomas had engaged the publicist Max Clifford to sell
her story. In March Ms Thomas arranged a meeting in a hotel ? very likely ...

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