This is now escalating out of control into a Watergate style crisis which goes on and on to some historic climax. What began as a phone hacking issue for celebrities, which interested few outside the circles of the hacked, has now become a viral drama. Nobody knows where it is headed. All we know is that is now spinning in unforeseen directions.
It now looks as if it can do real damage to the mighty Murdoch empire. These media empires do have a cycle; they rise, get too big, if not in size, then for their boots, then they fade, sometimes like Conrad Black with a spectacle, but mostly slowly diluting, like Beaverbrook, Northcliffe and Kemsley. The problem with Murdoch is that he appears more powerful than governments and his employees believe that no matter what they do, he will always be there for them, as long as whatever they do sells newspapers. At the centre of the current storm is the future ownership of BSkyB.
At this point the coalition enters the frame. Twice. First because of Cameron’s closeness to Andy Coulson and, to a lesser extent, the beleaguered Rebekah Brooks. Next because of the apparent intention of the government via Jeremy Hunt to approve the takeover of BSkyB by News International, when not a single person can be found in the whole country who thinks this is other than a bad idea. Moreover everybody remembers that when Vince Cable said some very rude things about the Murdoch set up, he lost that part of his job. Now it looks as if he was right. Why did Cameron not back him?
Finally we come to the Metropolitan Police. It now appears they are in the pay of the Murdoch press. It is not put like that. It is said that the police receive payments for providing the newspapers with information. It is, they say, legal. Really? Are you sure about that? Can it have anything to do with the fact that the original phone hacking investigation was not exhaustive as claimed by Scotland Yard, but at best a fiasco of ineptitude and at worst a cover up of a valued and lucrative income source?
We have now reached the stage where every time we turn on the news, we hear some new and repellent disclosure of how the most distraught and vulnerable are subjected to these illegal intrusions. We hear too how evidence is mounting up that those, very high up, who claimed ignorance and feigned outrage, actually know and knew then, a good deal more than they have thus far let on.
There is lots more to come.