Jeremy Hunt’s impartiality is in doubt, and he should go.

What kind of man has friends like these?

Andrew Marr once famously remarked that Margaret Thatcher was fortunate in her choice of enemies. The problem with David Cameron is that he is too clever by half in his choice of friends.

Over the last two years, the Prime Minister has found himself defending property developers, Rupert Murdoch, Andy Coulson, Rebekah Brooks, and now another man with shady form, Jeremy Hunt. This represents a trail not of loyalty, but abused influence. Anyone aware of what makes Mr Hunt tick could’ve predicted precisely why Cameron jumped at the chance to get rid of the gobby Vince Cable, and put Uriah Heep in his place. Now it has come to pass that Hunt was indeed batting for Murdoch (a man who was clearly his hero – as amplified by the Minister’s website at the time) it simply won’t do for him to sit there, smile knowingly and say “I will be exonerated, I have done nothing unethical”. However Lord Leveson thinks emails should be judged, the 165 pages of unpublished arse-licking revealed by his enquiry two days ago simply cannot be explained away: Jeremy Hunt lied to Parliament, and so he must go.

Or let me put it another way: if the unfortunate David Laws had to go for lying to a committee about supporting his gay partner, then for this gross deception, Hunt could hardly complain if he found himself stripped of his Commons membership, and facing corruption charges. I make no excuse for David Laws, but the deception was designed to keep his sexuality private, not make money: he is an extremely wealthy man, very talented as a financial operator, with a track record which, as far as I’ve been able to discern, has no clouds raining on it.

The same cannot be said of Jeremy Hunt. The nicest thing fellow Oxford students have to say about him at the time is ‘oleaginous’. In business, Hunt was going nowhere until he managed to finagle himself a contract – without competitors – to supply educational guides to the sort of smug quangos now allegedly on the Osborne bonfire. People keen to compete with him at the time found themselves frozen out…rarely, I understand, for good reason. In this sense, one can understand the Minister’s adoration of all things Newscorp: both are keen on rubbing out the competition, and both like the idea of globalist monopolism.

Jeremy Hunt should feel free to sue The Slog for that paragraph. I could use the money.

The Prime Minister has made a habit of defending the indefensible, misleading the house about his influence-gathering, and leaving most people in doubt as to the value of his word. The swift execution of Hunt advisor Adam Smith (for doing his boss’s bidding?) looks like a case of the sacrifical snake. It seems in many ways to sum up what Camerlot now seems to be about as a form of Government: the leg up, the nod and wink, the cash in hand, the dinners for the starf*ckers, and the refusal to be accountable.

All in all, this affair sums up quite well one of the main Slogarithms people read at this site: ‘We want accountable leadership, not unaccountable influence. We want leaders we can look up to, not slimeballs who look down on us’.

I’ve been saying it for over a year, and with every week the probable gets closer to the inevitable: Hackgate will do for David Cameron in the end.