“oooh-err, hahah, um, ‘scuse me….”

There’s more to this than guilt by association

The Hackgate dam has burst so comprehensively now, I sincerely hope some folks around the fringes of 10 Downing Street have plans in place for an orderly handover. Picking out the key points from yesterday’s Commons session and the overnight developments at Wapping, I see absolutely no way David Cameron can survive, and no way the two Murdochs can stay at the helm of Newscorp.

The muddy waters are voluminous, but only small objects here and there are luminous – ie, both toxic and explanatory.

First off, Harbottle & Lewis have been released from Newscorp confidentiality – or “from most of it”, as a source mysteriously told me last night. So neither they nor Lawrence Abramson can any longer hide behind the I Couldn’t Possibly Comment wall. Mr Abramson will have to explain why he gave the most inaccurate advice to Les Hinton in legal history about the evidence of criminality in the 300 Royal emails. That’s going to make interesting listening for some lucky Bobby somewhere. Mr Hinton himself is facing growing Congressional pressure in the US to face some form of judicial enquiry.

Second, Newscorp has been obliged to cut off Glenn Mulcaire’s hush-money, and several papers this morning are predicting confidently that he will now develop a much stronger singing voice. Once he starts, that’s curtains for Coulson and Brooks. It may even be curtains for Newscorp – but that depends on what the Americans find.

Third – and by far most significantly – although Camerlot are sandbagging every door and window of Number Ten, the wall of water from Wapping’s burst dam is seeping in at a rate which must be alarming the Conservative Party as a whole, let alone the Coalition. If you think this exaggerated, read on.

As The Slog knew some months ago, the ‘checks’ on Andy Coulson allegedly done by David Cameron are a figment of his already overworked imagination. This was confirmed from a security viewpoint by the Guardian late last night. George Osborne told a group of journalists pretty much the same thing, off the record, five weeks ago. The reality is that Cameron was nine tenths of the way to hiring somebody from the BBC, but Rebekah Brooks had an epi about it, and recommended Coulson very strongly. Sooner or later, the Redtop will fess up to that. There are also other senior Ministers – and people from other parts of the Constitutional arrangements we have in Britain – who gave Cameron very clear and firm advice about Coulson’s ethics. Loyalty is keeping them silent for the time being. But loyalty can’t be relied upon forever.

Coulson was using Neil Wallis for the odd ‘plumbing’ job during his time at Number Ten. That much is now public. Cameron denies knowledge of this, but somebody in Downing Street probably knew. Worse still, there are now allegations that Coulson had some Government and other phones hacked while he was working there. At least one national was working hard last night to stand this one up.

But the area of Dave’s greatest vulnerability is the one targeted ruthlessly by Labour members in the Commons debate yesterday: his myriad informal parties, dinners, conversations and drinks meetings with the Tooting Norton Newscorpers over the last seven months. If he believes that ‘transparent’ lists showing they took place (after they’ve been revealed) will suffice, then he’s being a very silly boy: the details of who-said-what will come out once Brooks and/or Murdoch Jr are facing heavy prison sentences. Meanwhile, Cameron’s unwillingness to deny this categorically is prima facie evidence that he did indeed talk about little else but the BSkyB deal during these sessions.

The Prime Minister is now at the stage where he tries to draw lines and offer versions of events, which then get unpicked by sleuthing and leaks. And as The Slog predicted last Tuesday, there might as well not be a recess at the moment: yesterday’s Commons session was a one-line Whip, but the House was packed. Not only packed, but crackling with atmosphere. One big, old and ugly Labour beast after another stood up to sow doubt with a tone of menace in the timbre of the questions; and for once, Miliband opened with a crystal-clear analysis of why the PM’s position was simply not sustainable. Whatever the Maily Telegraph wants to print, Big Ed is a twerp, but he did himself a whole heap of good yesterday.

In short, Hackgate is not going to go away. Nor, I suspect, is the cloud hanging over Tom Baldwin. Nor, probably, is the suspicion above other titles in Fleet Street. Piers Morgan ripped into Louise Mensch for her hacking accusations against the Moron on CNN two nights ago, but as long as two years ago, a left-wing journalist alleged to me that Piers “is not straight and should be kept at bay with a bargepole”. And Tom Baldwin had at least one high-profile colleague at the Sunday Times who now works for the Maily Telegraph….along with all those people who hired ‘private detectives’ 964 times during 2005 at the Dacre Mail. (I still maintain, by the way, that Dacre is both mad and innocent – Ms. Mensch has got this one wrong).

Reader fatigue will set in eventually – perhaps sooner than many realise – on the subject of hacking hacks. But the political/Camerlot/Coalition/Police corruption dimensions are still fresh – with many riddles unsolved.

In particular, The Slog wonders why the Royal spin-doctors seem so desperate to keep telling porkies about the conversations HMQ and other family members have had with Cameron, other Tory Ministers, and intermediaries on subjects ranging from Andy Coulson through Rupert Murdoch to the hacking of the Yorks’ phones in 2008.

Also largely enigmatic is the taping of Vince Cable – what the aim was, why the story was at first spiked at the Telegraph, and how the PM managed to sack Vince for being anti-Murdoch…and then hire somebody avowedly pro-Murdoch. (Notable yesterday, however, was Jeremy Rhyming-Slange’s hasty switch of horses as he told BBC Breakfast, “The question that News International have to answer is why malpractice happened throughout a very important part of their organisation without people like Rupert Murdoch knowing.” Or, indeed, him.)

Finally, the Plod drama is still only halfway through Act One. Just as with Cameron’s Newscorp socialising, I think we need to know more about the table-talk during the heavy season of Wapping Yard Dining Club sessions throughout 2005-2008.

Andy Hayman, the former top Met security cop, remains a sort of Noises Off – a role due to have speaking lines before too long. Coulson will probably help in this area. And perhaps we will discover whether Mr Hayman was either a cypher for dirty political tricks, or as he and his overactive lawyers insist, entirely innocent. This one is a genuine unknown.

But this is where we may end up in Hackgate: the use of phone-hacking for political gain. This is, I know, where Gordon the Gargoyle wants to take it. For once in his life, he may have a point. Time will tell. For myself, the wider issue remains personal privacy – and the need for our police forces to get up to speed on stock market blagging. This is a huge sector – and making lots of money for foreigners who formerly held more governmental surveillance roles in the USSR.

As I keep saying, this show is set for a marathon run. And those in the lead role will, as always, change from time to time during that run.