HINDSIGHT is, of course, a wonderful thing and David Cameron would clearly not have appointed Andy Coulson as his chief spin doctor had he known he was engaged in criminal activity.

Indeed, the Prime Minister has now been forced into an embarrassing apology for employing the former News of the World editor, confessing: “It was the wrong decision.”

But, with or without hindsight, the truth is that Mr Cameron took a huge gamble when he took Coulson with him on his journey to Number Ten, with a brief to use his tabloid experience and connections to manage the media for the Tories.

Let us not forget that only six months before being offered the lucrative and powerful job, Mr Coulson had resigned from the News of the World after the phone-hacking scandal blew up in his face. Yes, he denied all knowledge of it – blaming a rogue reporter – but it happened on his watch and he had to quit.

Mr Coulson may not have been found guilty at that stage but he was carrying the whiff of a very recent scandal with him and it is staggering that such a risk was taken.

The decision demonstrated reckless and desperate judgement: reckless because no one could really know at that stage where the phone-hacking scandal would lead; and desperate because it exposed Mr Cameron’s obsession with getting close to Rupert Murdoch, Britain’s most powerful media mogul.

He had watched Tony Blair take media management to a new level by recruiting the former tabloid journalist Alastair Campbell as his head of spin. Mr Cameron chose to go a step further by giving Mr Murdoch’s out of work former editor a “second chance”.

While Coulson now faces a spell in jail, his former employer faces having his dubious judgement thrown back at him time and time again.