More cosy texts between British PM and Brooks revealed

British Prime Minister David Cameron and former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks. AFP

LONDON – Two more cosy text messages between British Prime Minister David Cameron and former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks emerged Sunday, with Cameron commenting on riding one of her horses.

The texts were obtained by The Mail on Sunday newspaper, which said they were part of a cache of emails and texts handed over by Downing Street and Brooks to Britain’s press ethics inquiry.

Very few have so far been made public – sparking accusations from the Labour opposition that they are being covered up.

The texts were sent in October 2009, shortly after Brooks was promoted from editor of The Sun tabloid to chief executive of its parent company News International, media baron Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper publishing arm.

They shed further light on the relationship between Conservative Party leader Cameron and Brooks, who live close to each other in Oxfordshire, southern England.

Brooks’s husband, racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks, went to the prestigious Eton College with Cameron.

“The horse CB put me on. Fast, unpredictable and hard to control but fun. DC”, read one text from Cameron, who was then the opposition leader.

The one from Brooks, sent after Cameron’s speech to the Conservative Party conference in which he touched on the death of his son Ivan, read: “Brilliant speech. I cried twice. Will love ‘working together’.”

It is thought Brooks supplied the messages to the inquiry, The Mail on Sunday said.

Questions about Cameron’s close links with Murdoch’s media empire, and Brooks in particular, came to the fore after the phone-hacking scandal at News International’s now-defunct News of the World newspaper erupted in July last year.

The public inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of Britain’s press, triggered by the hacking scandal and headed by judge Brian Leveson, is expected to report at the end of this month.

During its hearings, revelations that Cameron had ridden a horse that Brooks had loaned from the Metropolitan Police and occasionally signed his texts to her LOL, believing it to mean “lots of love”, triggered days of headlines.

A Downing Street spokesman said: “The prime minister has always been happy to comply with whatever Lord Justice Leveson has asked of him.”

A spokesman for Leveson declined to comment, as did Brooks.

The Mail on Sunday said the texts had to be revealed as it was “plainly in the public interest that we should know what sort of relationship exists between two such important people.

“Whatever proposals Lord Justice Leveson may have for press regulation, it is essential that they do not end by making the government more powerful and unaccountable than it already is.”

Brooks is facing trial for conspiracy to access voicemails.

In a separate case, she and her husband are among a group charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.