Sorry about the essay below but I’m poorly in bed …
TL;DR How I think claimants’ side tried to rekindle legitimate public anger against the media using illegitimate means.
What I’m taking from the evidence is that Hugh Grant and Steve Coogan knew that the wider public had limited sympathy for a bunch of luvvies. Grant, Harris etc however saw the real, genuine public outrage against the tabloids over the Millie Dowler hacking scandal.
Certain characters associated with Hacked Off wanted to leverage that powerful public outrage at the press to pressure the Conservative government to fully implement all the Leveson recommendations (spoiler: the government didn’t).
How best to enact this predominantly political plan? It was essential to get on board some sympathetic characters who were ‘national treasures’ and/or victims of tragedy and wrongdoing. That would hopefully stoke some renewed public outrage that the luvvies and Hacked Off could exploit. They only needed enough to lean on the government a bit.
(That it might give the Lib Dems a chance to pressure successive Conservative and Labour governments is not a bug of the Hacked Off system; it’s a design intention.)
And if the national treasures identified wouldn’t play along, then some outrage would have to be stoked in them to get them to play ball. Potentially through manufactured documents. And thus did a well-known non-luvvie or two become full of righteous indignation to the extent that they potentially agreed to a little charade, a jolly jape if you will, of dealing with the pesky Limitation rule.
Trouble is, Harry is no longer widely admired or the object of sympathy, and Doreen Lawrence now carries the whole burden of being the lightning rod for the right sort of public attention. And running parallel, the little charade that was allegedly cooked up is turning into a shitshow - and perhaps Doreen Lawrence realises this.