Dressed in a dark suit and a black tie, an ashen-faced Andy Coulson may have looked like he was attending his own political funeral when he took to the witness box at the Leveson Inquiry yesterday. By the time he stepped down, it was clear he had in reality returned to haunt Downing Street.

The Billericay-born ex-editor of the News of the World neatly side-stepped questions about the influence of Rupert Murdoch as he proceeded to create difficulties for David Cameron by making clear the Conservative Party's lack of curiosity about the extent of phone hacking at the defunct Sunday tabloid.

During two and a half hours of questioning, Mr Coulson confirmed for the first the time that the approach to work for the Tories shortly after his resignation from the NOTW in January 2007 had been made over a drink in a London hotel with George Osborne.

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