The real question about #hackgate is, I think, just how irresistible the momentum is on this thing. It looks increasingly like it won’t stop until all the dominoes have fallen, and the undeniable fact is that the run ends not with James Murdoch – who, if John Yates resigns today must surely be the next to go – but with David Cameron. It still looks utterly fanciful that this will kill him, but the question is, if it doesn’t, how does this end?
The answer is that it doesn’t – if Cameron isn’t forced to resign this week, then the deep reservations which the public now hold about the company he keeps will continue for years. Blair escaped from the Ecclestone drama, but arguably he never completely recovered his reputation. For Cameron, things are far, far worse. There’s a domino poised just behind him, and he’ll be glancing over his shoulder for the rest of his tenancy at number 10, wondering if it’ll fall.
It doesn’t help him that the two men most likely to profit from his demise – David Davis and Nick Clegg – are, unlike most of the rest of the coalition – squeaky clean on this stuff. If I were David Davis right now, I’d be taking to Lib Dems constantly. He needs to be reassuring them that although he’s a creature of the right, his civil liberties credentials are right up their street. Could he hold a coalition together, if it came to it?
And one more thought – how has George Osborne kept out of this??
