BIG earthquakes are events of special horror. Long after their immediate terrors have passed, it takes survivors time to trust, fully, in the solidity of the ground. Yet some good can also come of them. Earthquakes can bring instant transparency to murky societies, exposing the greedy who put up shoddy buildings or the officials bribed to look the other way.

Britain is enduring a political earthquake, its third in as many years. After the banking crisis revealed ineptitude in high places, and then a scandal broke over parliamentary expenses, parts of the press stand accused of lawbreaking on an industrial scale. The tale of woe is rehearsed in more detail elsewhere in the paper (see our briefing). But what will be the effects on politics?

In terms of the immediate impact on Westminster, the picture could hardly be clearer. David Cameron has had a bad crisis, while Ed Miliband has had his best ever week as leader of the opposition. To be more precise, Mr Cameron has had to deal with two parallel scandals centred on Rupert Murdoch's Sunday tabloid, the News of the World. The first—Mr Cameron's closeness to executives from that paper's parent company, News International—was handled with aplomb. All party leaders were too cosy with press bosses because we wanted their support, the prime minister declared. That candour would have earned Mr Cameron credit were it not for his second headache: his decision to employ a tainted former News of the World editor, Andy Coulson, as his communications chief between 2007 and January this year: an indefensible blunder for which he has yet to apologise.

Mr Miliband's boldness involved not candour but speed. He was quick to call for heads to roll at News International, then to call for Mr Murdoch to drop a bid to buy all of BskyB, a satellite broadcaster. When it became clear the government would lose a vote called by Labour on the takeover, Mr Cameron offered belated Tory support and also appointed a judge to head up a public inquiry. In an ultimate tribute, even Mr Murdoch has muttered to friends that Mr Miliband played his cards well.

If the immediate political consequences are fairly clear, the deeper crisis of trust is harder to measure. The British were already struggling to retain their faith that—broadly—theirs is a country in which wrongdoing in high places (exposed, as often as not, by the ferocious British press) is punished without fear or favour. It is possible that this third great shaking of the ethical landscape will trigger an enduring, unhappy transformation. Perhaps voters will drift from their current mood of corrosive cynicism towards the full-blown fatalism that blights some nearby democracies, where even those mired in sleaze are routinely re-elected. Others take an alternative, though equally gloomy view. They predict that Britain's rulers may seize the chance to impose political controls on the press, aping neighbouring countries in which government leaders can sack television news anchors with a phone call, and ministers routinely "read over" (ie, censor) interviews after they have been conducted.

The British want this fixed

Bagehot is more optimistic. This third shaking of British public trust is a dangerous moment, but some good may yet come of it. True, there is a lot of cynicism about: one poll, by ComRes, found that 80% of voters did not trust the media in the wake of the latest scandals, while 56% did not trust any of the main party leaders to rid British politics of corruption.

But dig deeper, and the British public are not ready to accept that their country is beyond fixing, or that the press would be better off muzzled by those in power. To put it in rather jingoistic terms, Britain is not resigned to becoming either Italy or France. A big majority of British respondents told YouGov, another pollster, that rival newspapers had "rightly" exposed serious allegations against the News of the World. Fully 86% wanted a public inquiry into the scandal: the British may dislike politicians, but they still have faith in a probe led by a judge.

There is also reason to believe British politicians when they say they are united in regretting their earlier servility towards the Murdoch press. It is easy to scoff at political big beasts bleating about their fear of the tabloids. You know how it is, Mr Cameron told MPs in one of the week's more depressing revelations: "Your bins are gone through by some media organisation, but you hold back from dealing with it because you want good relations with the media." Labour's Lord Mandelson (a dark master of spin to two prime ministers) added this week that all parties had been cowed by the press, "because we were too fearful".

But in fact Mr Murdoch occupies a distinct place in British politics. In America, he is straightforwardly a voice on the right thanks to assets such as Fox News: it is hard to imagine Republicans and Democrats agreeing on much about him. In Britain, Mr Murdoch is, in effect, an avatar of power in its purest form: his papers stridently support parties that are winning, backing both Labour and the Conservatives in their day. It is plausible that British parties could see a common interest in curbing his power.

A final reason for (wary) optimism: there is cross-party agreement on the perils of government regulation of the press. The scandal is likely to widen: other newspapers will surely find themselves on the rack soon. Police officers will start being arrested. Expect calls to muzzle the press, as the public feels the ground shifting again. For now, Mr Miliband says his instinct continues to be for self-regulation. Mr Cameron talks of "independent" regulation with more teeth, but also a press that makes politicians' lives "miserable a lot of the time". That certainly sounds like Britain. Politicians must keep it that way, strengthening and not demolishing the institutions of their raucous, flawed democracy. Public trust has been terribly shaken. It can be rebuilt.





Economist.com/blogs/bagehot