ON THE STAND

Straw: I ‘Gossiped’ with Brooks

Frequently commuted together.

Britain’s former Home Secretary Jack Straw testified Thursday that he and Rebekah Brooks, the former head of News International, would “gossip” together when they commuted on the train. Straw said that from 2007 until 2009—the time when he was the justice secretary—he and Brooks “would talk about what was in the paper, but Straw insisted the conversations never covered anything sensitive since there were always people “earwigging.” Straw conceded that former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government and members of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire were “very, very close, sometimes incestuous”—which has been one of the chief claims by the Leveson Inquiry. Brooks was charged last week with perverting justice during the hacking investigation.