This is extremely serious.
Serious for the Met.
Serious for News Corp.
Serious for Cameron.
One more expendable person saving the ass of corporate capitalism.
Just to remind people of the dirty story about Daniel Morgan's murder behind this.
And BTW, this is where Murdoch senior said that they had only done monor things wrong in (the handling) of the issue - a very strange attitude.
I don't think the US Department of Justice (DoJ) can let this go now. News Corp have been in bed with criminals.
So has Cameron - and I don't think his party will let this go either.
Labours point will be that while the government make a distinction between employing someone at number ten and employing someone who is subject to a police investigation (before, during or after, well during or after) and keeping mum about it, they will say there is a difference between cosying up to News International and employing them as press officer (the effect of employing Coulson).
Meanwhile the Met are denuded. I notice that Coulson passed vetting to Strap One (or some such). This whole thing is imploding.
Just how corrupt are the Met?
Notice this in the Wikipedia article:
Morgan's unsolved murder has been described as a reminder of the old London police culture of corruption and unaccountability.
There is something subversive in the way the Met operates. Is it pro or anti corporate culture?
Look again at the Murdoch family saga. Doesn't it spice up the otherwise anodyne and strictly impersonal corporate world?
In the end corporatism will win out. We will drink deep at the river Lethe.
I do think that the corruption in the Met needs to be tackled.
But, in the end, I do not think it can be tackled until we look at the issues that concern PR and inducement, the collusion between business and Whitehall which is the backdrop to this saga.