Avaaz petition: Jeremy Hunt Must Go.

As the Leveson inquiry continues, depressing a nation by holding a mirror up to it's own moribund fascinations with celebrity reproduction, new and startling revelations arise.

Sometimes apologies are not enough, sometimes people should not be in politics anymore.

This is that time.

A message from Avaaz.org.

Dear friends across the UK,

Secret emails show Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt helped the Murdochs with their BSkyB bid when he was supposed to protect the public interest. The emails show that we played a key role in stopping their corruption. Now, if we now raise our voices again, we can force David Cameron to fire Hunt and rid our politics of the Murdoch menace. Sign the petition and forward widely:

Yesterday, explosive emails were released that show that Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt schemed with the Murdochs to help them win the BSkyB deal. This is an outrageous breach of his public duties, but if we raise our voices now we can get him fired.

Instead of properly scrutinising this deal, the emails show that Hunt set up a secret back channel to feed information to News Corp. One of the emails revealed that Hunt thought it was crucial to weaken Avaaz's campaign. We had them running scared! Now, let's use our power to get David Cameron to remove Jeremy Hunt.

This is the top story across the country right now, and Avaaz is the best placed community to finally put an end to this crooked collusion between the government and the Murdoch Mafia. Sign the urgent petition to remove Hunt and send this to everyone:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/fire_jeremy_hunt_2/?vl

Hunt was supposed to judge the BSkyB takeover in an independent, quasi-judicial manner. But hundreds of pages of internal News Corp emails and texts just released by the Leveson Inquiry show regular correspondence between News Corp and Hunt’s office. The emails show Hunt "shared [News Corp's] objectives" and sent confidential drafts of key statements to News Corp before making them public — a move News Corp itself says was "absolutely illegal".

Despite the clear conflict of interest and lack of professionalism, Downing Street is digging in and insists that Hunt still has the Prime Minister’s full confidence. But Cameron knows he faces a vital decision for the credibility of his government and our massive public outcry will force him to get rid of Hunt, and to reveal the full details of all his interactions with the Murdochs and their staff.

Hunt has shown he isn't fit for his role and can't be trusted. He thinks this is business as usual and it’s up to us to prove him wrong. Join the urgent call. Click below and forward to everyone:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/fire_jeremy_hunt_2/?vl

Together, we helped scrap the Murdoch Mafia’s bid for BSkyB last summer. Now we have a chance to clean up the dirty politics that nearly allowed it to sail through.

With hope and determination,

Emma, Brant, Allison, Luis, Alice, Michael, Ricken, and the rest of the Avaaz team

Sources:

News Corp email: "key for him [Hunt] to find a way to weaken Avaaz campaign's arguments" (PDF file)

http://avaazbackup.s3.amazonaws.com/000NewsEmailAvaaz.pdf

Jeremy Hunt faces calls to resign over BSkyB claims (Guardian)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/apr/24/jeremy-hunt-calls-resign-bskyb?newsfeed=true

Jeremy Hunt ‘should quit’ over News Corp claims (ITV)

http://www.itv.com/news/2012-04-24/james-murdoch-on-phone-hacking-at-the-news-of-the-world-at-the-leveson-inquiry/

Is this the end for Jeremy Hunt?

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/politics/2012/04/end-jeremy-hunt

Jeremy Hunt and the Murdochs: how minister oiled wheels of BSkyB bid (Guardian)