This isn't a knocking piece about the Telegraph's allegedly paying for information - in this case a the peep at MPs' expenses. No point in that: at some time or other most newspapers engage in it or deplore it, though never simultaneously. What is both admirable and horrifying is the way in which the paper has got the news agenda by the scruff of the neck and is controlling what happens through the drip, drip, drip of stories. Sir Compton can never remember an instance when the political class so completely lost its grip on what was happening - normal politics and governance has ground to a halt or is being ignored - and the only similar story in terms of frenzy and not having a clue about what would happen next was Diana.
We're now on to Day Four (or is it Day Five?) and the steam is starting to dissipate. MPs' expense claims are becoming like tits in the Sun - if you've seen 10,000, you've seen them all. 42JJ? Cor! £125 on lightbulbs? Blimey! Public distaste won't fade but the frenzy will. It has to - such priapismic excitement is impossible to sustain.
The question turns to why they did it. Ignoring all the huffing and puffing about the public interest - and even now I can hear the voices of Telegraph executives, or bloggers, rehearsing their nasty, personal counter-attacks to any whisper of criticsim ... (good job they don't read this) - the answer lies in the nature of the company. Where once it was part, a big part, of what might be termed the Establishment, it is now in the hands of rogue proprietors and feral executives for whom attention is an obsession and inconoclasm a vocation. They smashed and remade what was around them when they took over a few years back ; they will smash and remake anything if they think it gives them market advantage - although it is difficult to see what could top the past few days.
What will be the consequences? For the public, a deepening of scepticism about the polity and yet lower turnouts at the polls. I am not convinced that fringe candidates will benefit at a General Election but they may make a showing in the European polls. For MPs, life just got a little bit tougher, nastier, and the sort of people with a contribution to make to public life may now be discouraged - this serves no one. And for The Daily Beast, the whole thing will be forgotten about in a few years but the distaste of the political class on whom it feeds will continue. Scores will be settled - they always are.
What of the parties? Overall, it has been worse for Labour because it happened on their watch and because Mr Brown is just no longer believed in anything he says. A thousand sorries on bended knee wouldn't save him. Mr Cameron, by saying sorry yesterday, has limited the damage and, again, the fact that Labour took the initial onslaught means the outrage is somewhat lessened. Dave is starting to look like he might at least make a semi-decent fist of his next job.
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A ghastly display yesterday from that appalling little turncoat Shaun Woodward - just watch him try to flip again after the election, fucking stupid Billynomates. Such turncoats always become mere footnotes sooner or later. Anyway, the Northern Ireland Secretary made a spectacularly ill-judged counter attack on BBC Norn Iron, bleating that the tea and biccies he had enjoyed in the green room had been paid for by taxpayers too and that presenters should perhaps reveal their expenses. What was his line here, I wonder? Anoraks will have noticed the similarity to Neil Hamilton at the peak of his troubles - or maybe that was losing the case? - appearing outside a primary school with a biscuit which he said he was going to declare on the register of members' interests.
Here is the key quote from the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges:
2) On the 21 October 1994, the Plaintiff made light of the
allegations against him, and in particular of his undeclared acceptance of the
opulent services of the Ritz Hotel in Paris at enormous expense to Al-Fayed, by
remarking that he would be registering a biscuit given him in a school in his
constituency in the Register of Members' Interests. This remark was rightly
regarded by the Prime Minister as inappropriate for a Minister of the
Crown.
Uncanny similarity of the lack of self knowledge and busted political radar.
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