Reporters trying to blow the lid off Hackgate need to focus on the Andies.

The two Andies….hanging together

The Slog’s page exclusively devoted to Hackgate is now the biggest single part of the site. The Coalition, however – and let’s be real here, we’re talking about the David Cameron Club – seems determined to tough it out. As indeed do the Met Police, and several senior executives at the as yet only proven phone-hack perpetrator, Newscorp’s title The News of the World.

It is I think instructive to  reiterate how the Prime Minister’s inner circle think when it comes to ‘news management’. Based on my own very limited contacts within the Cameroon elite, the following seems to represent pretty reliable information:

1. The Tory leadership has no intention of withdrawing from the EU, and never did.
2. Its calculation is that people won’t like this, but won’t get particularly worked up about it…and think Farage is a bumbly the voters can’t take seriously anyway.
3. The Lansley ‘reforms’ are a prelude to hospital sell-offs, but so far hardly anyone outside the discredited Left has spotted this….nor will they until it’s too late.
4. The much-vaunted ‘Tory Resistance’ is overrated in terms of both size and bite. The very Tory weakness in the polls is their weak card, and will stifle any serious rebellion.
5. The pro-AV contingent will lose the referendum. (This is a gamble, pure and simple).
6. They have no intention on reforming banks whose income and assets exceed their own. And most voters are far more concerned with their micro problems rather than the macro picture.

7. The 2-tier pension plan will create a furore, but then pass into law largely unchanged.

8. Cameron sees himself as bombproof against any further ramifications from the Hackgate scandal.

9. The economic situation is full of imponderables, and we must simply look aggressive on cuts while hoping for the best.

I would say that they could easily get away with no’s 1-5, but they’re on less safe ground with 6-9. The last dimension – a now inevitable second econo-fiscal crisis – will be negatively decisive for the Coalition, and represents  a power capable of sweeping away far more than one flakey oligarchy. The problem is, nobody knows whether that hurricane will next week, or the year after next.

In the meantime, the stickiest wicket is Hackgate. Part of the mystery’s potentially mortal threat to the Dave Gang is that the Conservative leader seems arrogantly uncaring about it. Only acute pressure from close colleagues forced him to dump Coulson in the first place; and I understand that, in the light of his Libyan adventure, it is now barely on the PM’s radar.

As regards the specific phone-hacking scandal at the NotW – and at some point it will spread to other Fleet St titles – were it to remain a matter of tabloid sociopaths spying on the more  unpleasant products of politics and fame, few would care…and a lot of folks would applaud loudly.

But it has already gone way beyond that, and is already unstoppable up to a certain point. If, however, it goes past that point, it could turn very quickly into a hugely destructive cultural scandal – bigger than Profumo, and on a par with Watergate. Here’s why.

Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein to ‘follow the money’ as they traced the Watergate scandal back to the Oval Office during 1973. The Throat’s insight was that this was a slush fund scandal about misuse of campaign funds for politically (and ultimately anti-Constitutional) ends. I think we need to use a parallel insight about Hackgate.

The problem is that, while money leaves an accountancy trail and lots of bank records, a scandal based on illegal surveillance leaves very little. The one thing it does leave in the 21st century, however, is emails. Being realistic, all the Sue Akers investigating team has to do from here on is follow the emails. I say ‘all’, but police sources told me a fortnight ago that Ms Akers’ team is already swamped by cascading  waterfalls of evidence. Panhandling them is going to take time: and as other bigger stories or economic disasters intervene, politicians in both Westminster and at the Yard could ensure that, once the Coulsons and Brooks of this world have gone down, the enquiry would be quietly wound up.

So if this sprawling illegal surveillance scandal is to move to its next stage, it has to do so fairly soon – that is, long before the Powers that Be can demote it to being a media scandal: worthy of the occasional book, but more a footnote in history than the sort of stuff that changes everything.

There is a good chance that such a step-change will come from what I call foot-slogging: digging deep into the detail to find the odd nugget others have missed. Bear in mind that, while 24/7 quantitative news coverage allows lies to be told and forgotten, it also confuses those who have told them. We do indeed weave tangled webs when we deceive; and I have some confidence that this will trap the odd wide-boy here and there.

But there is one major cover-up weakness that should now be attacked from all possible angles by the remaining objective media involved. It is to do with the trail that leads from Newscorp to the Metropolitan Police, increasingly suggesting a degree of formal and unhealthy cooperation between the two of them.

Only by solving the real nature of that relationship – how it started, why it blossomed, who was involved, and why it was mutually beneficial – will we stand a chance of then moving on to what could be the final stage: a row about how the Met’s security wing, and a media mogul from the right wing, conspired with politicians to gather dirt on their enemies.

In the immediate term, however, were I a Fleet Street editor, I’d focus on two key personalities in all this: Andy Coulson and Andy Hayman. It remains the firm opinion of  The Slog that the duo are an Essex pairing par excellence, and that’s why I am almost certain theirs was more than a casual acquaintance. Pugnacious they may be, but sooner or later, one or both of them will be caught out. The media spoils will go to those who pursue them with dogged perseverance and clever insight.