Finish him!

If there are anywhere near 4,000 phone-hacking cases, as one senior detective says, Murdoch could be bleeding slowly for as long as he lives. He no longer enjoys the friendship of the people he bought and has learned the hard way that real power is constrained by the truth. Like some discredited god, all the potency once ascribed to him is evaporating. The paper tiger is on fire.

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[E]verything and anything will be sacrificed to maintain the family's position. It is not so much the Murdochs' financial interests that weigh heaviest in the balance, though they are important, but their power. Essentially they say to the world: this is ours and we are not going to let it go.

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At this stage, the number of police officers involved is unknown. News International's attempts to switch the focus of the inquiry onto the police by releasing details of payments to officers raised more questions than answers... The two organisations that are carrying out the investigations are... the Metropolitan Police and News International, both of whom are the subject of these allegations.

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If the PM has discovered that the second iron rule of national life is that you cannot get into bed with Murdoch without one day waking to a nasty rash and an embarrassing discharge, he has always known that the first is this: whatever the battle, whatever the terrain and whatever the stakes, in the end Murdoch wins.

Today there is the hope, faint but seductive, of change. Public repugnance on this scale is a rare and precious force in a country beset by apathy. It fades very quickly, and must be harnessed and deployed before it does... Murdoch has never been as vulnerable as today and, if allowed to wriggle free, never will be again.

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