Say what you like, this does finally give meaning to David Cameron's "we're all in this together" catchphrase. Whether the members of Britain's necrotic establishment are wading in it, or are up to their necks in it, will be a matter for you to call. But what an irony that Murdoch tabloids, infrequently righteous in their crusades, have finally been shown what major corruption looks like. It's not a couple of swingers daring to live an unconventional lifestyle in a Wilmslow terrace – it was in the mirror all along.

Yet the solemn announcement that the News of the World is dead (long live the Sun on Sunday!) does not indicate the Murdoch-controlled culture that has debased this septic isle for decades has been dismantled. This week, people have beheld MPs saying what they actually think about Britain's most obscenely powerful unelected foreign tax exile, and marvelled as if they had seen unicorns. That gives you some idea of the scale of the clean-up, and unless all manner of establishment drones get brave and stay brave, revulsion over the corruption of public life by Murdoch and his soldiers will go the same way as that pertaining to bankers or MPs' expenses.

People are right to be revolted. It is revolting. Indeed, there are so many threads that we should don rubber gloves and follow merely one of them for a flavour of the whole. So, do open your textbooks at "war".

Rupert Murdoch was the only figure powerful enough to be able to state explicitly, without consequence, that he was backing war on Iraq to bring down the price of oil. So his "free press" all cheer-led for said war, and began commodifying their version of it, even confecting their own military award ceremonies as though the medal system were inadequate.

The whitewashing report into the death of a scientist who questioned the basis for that war was mysteriously leaked to Murdoch's papers – another WORLD EXCLUSIVE – while others in his pay hacked the phones and emails of those casualties of war being repatriated in bodybags, to be monetised as stories all over again. Any complaint about this must be taken before an industry court presided over not by the kangaroo of Rupert's native Australia, but an even less engaged selection of backscratching editors, including his own.

What a country we do live in. My apologies for repeating sentiments voiced in this column many times – as a recovering Murdoch employee, my sponsor insists I share thrice-weekly – but this is a land where a change in prime ministers constitutes the mere shuffling of Rupert's junior personnel. Anyone in doubt as to exactly how dirty a little secret Murdoch has always been is reminded that despite Margaret Thatcher being so close that they repeatedly Christmassed together at Chequers, she does not once even mention him in her memoirs. Not once!

Like Voldemort, he must not be named. And such yuletide bunk-ups continued down the years, via the Blairs, all the way to the PM's festive supper with Rebekah Brooks barely six months ago.

Perhaps Cameron will now de-BFF the News International boss. He certainly ought to. My friend Matthew is fond of quoting the legendary Manchester Guardian critic Neville Cardus, who never took tea with the notional enemy because "to do so would be to dilute the purity of my hatred". Clearly, we can't all be haters, and a certain amount of friendliness between press and parliament is necessary and beneficial.

But you can't really kitchen sup with long spoons, and Britain would be a better place if politicians and journalists picked a lane and stuck to it, instead of pursuing the furtive, corrosive form of backscratching realpolitik which has got us where we are today.

Until then, historians assessing this period will find even cabinet papers infinitely less revealing than guest lists. Within the placements of cosy parties in the Cotswolds lie many unpalatable answers. Perhaps they will ask themselves why tragedy-stricken Gordon Brown felt he had to invite a clutch of tabloid editors to the funeral of his baby daughter. If they find that conundrum too ghastly to contemplate, they might question quite why Brown asked the then Sun columnist Richard Littlejohn to his wedding. Fear, presumably. It certainly isn't Richard's charm.

Yet did it save Brown from the inevitable Sun evisceration? Of course not. This is a relationship that has only ever worked one way. Forget America – Murdoch's empire is the one with which this country has long nurtured its most "special relationship", which has thus far always ended in tears for the prime minister of the day, and by extension for the country.

So the outcry finally inspired by Nick Davies's heroic pursuit of the truth is a heart-soaring start, but it is still only a start. Turning it into a new dawn will take a courage which none of the main party leaders have shown before this very week, when not doing so would have been political suicide. As it seeks to power through the BSkyB purchase, News Corp will, by hook or by crook, attempt to begin collecting on the complex implicit deals it made with them and others.

Beware: many sounding off now will betray us with a kiss (and not tell).

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