Premiership of David Cameron Christmas with Brooks, was accused by Ed Miliband of being "out of step with public opinion" and lacking leadership on the matter due to his "close relationships" with News International. The scandal was further aggravated by the announcement he had ridden Rebekah Brooks horse on loan from the Metropolitan Police, and the implicit involvement of Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, whom had been handed jurisdiction over Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB bid after Vince Cable's supposed expression of bias, in passing confidential information to the Murdoch empire regarding the bid's progress Right-leaning political commentator Peter Oborne argued that it was no longer possible
News Corporation takeover bid for BSkyB likely (according to a later Telegraph investigation) by two former Telegraph employees who had moved to News International, a News Corporation subsidiary. Hunt was much more sympathetic to the takeover bid than Cable. The second turning point was the series of revelations in early July of the hacking of the phones of non-celebrity victims by the "News of the World", a tabloid newspaper published by News International. Details of the activities, especially regarding the paper's hacking into the voicemail of murder victim Milly Dowler, sparked widespread outrage against News Corporation. Attempts to defuse the scandal by closing the "News of