Yesterday’s print edition of the Times was the start of something big: the Murdoch press repaying Dave by getting him out of various holes – and depicting him as the Strong One taking full control.

Last Monday, the Prime Minister made his displeasure very clear to Rebekah and James: stop the vendetta against Prince Andrew – or else. Previous columns here will illuminate as to what ‘or else’ is about, but Wednesday’s Times edition abruptly changed tack on the Yorks, running a double-page spread about socialites and big wheels ‘springing to Andrew’s defence’.

But as always with Murdoch, Cameron had to pay a further price – or rather, accept another deal: give us the lowdown on the changes at Number Ten, and we’ll play up the Great Leader angle bigtime.

The result can be seen pretty consistently from pages 1-9 – and included the paper’s leader: ‘The PM is concentrating his power, and he is right’ (page 2), followed on page 3 by a detailed ‘Circles of Influence’ diagram. (Interesting in this illustration was the distance of new Comms Officer Craig Oliver from the Sun-God. While Coulson was on Mercury, poor old Craig is somewhere further out than Uranus. No influence in Newscorp, no place in the Inner Circle.)

Next came  ‘Labour struggling to regain trust on economy’; and then another dps on Police fighting back against pay cuts…but very much from the angle of Dave as the tough-guy. Sean O’Neill’s opinion piece on page 9 – ‘Cameron’s unflinching mission’ – could almost have been written by Lord Gnome: Dave is, allegedly, the man who ‘will not flinch from saying what needs to be said, and doing what needs to be done’.

Uh-huh. As with the bankers, Murdoch, the cuts, and Brussels.

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There are two problems with any form of soul-selling. First of all, the Devil has to keep on finding your soul useful unto all eternity. This never happens – and especially not with Rupert Murdoch. Secondly, the Devil you choose has to be powerful enough to influence those things for which you sold your soul in the first place.

In theory, Murdoch does have that influence; but The Times behind paywalls has seen its influence cut by 70%, and MySpace is a billion-dollar disaster. Further, the centre of Roop’s influence has shifted from the UK and Australia to the United States, where his Daily is doing well as an Apple app, and the old Digger is busily collecting GOP legislators.

And last but not least, to make Hackgate go away, Newscorp is going to have to bend the Met Police, the media, the Home Secretary, Sue Akers, every celeb in the UK, and the Royal Family to his will. Trying to do this blew up in his face. Over the coming weeks, further revelations could blow him away completely.

For the Prime Minister himself, there is a third problem: as long as Hackgate is there, the chance that the trail will lead back to Number Ten is ever-present. I’m told that in private, Mr Cameron regards this possibility as a feeble joke. Well, he is the strong man now. We’ll just have to wait and see how strong he really is.

Related: Squabbling among the Top Tory Three