The real news is that the GOP primary contest is finally on the verge of becoming a two-horse race after so many false dawns. 

Despite winning his home state comfortably, Newt Gingrich labored in all the other contests.   Worn down by the attacks from the Romney campaign that began in Florida, the gutsy former House Speaker finally looks like he is running out of steam. 

Newt's gutsy nomination bid looks set to fall short

Gingrich trailed Santorum by 13 per cent in Tennessee and 7 per cent in Oklahoma, coming third in both.  If these states are bellwethers for the coming primaries in Kansas, Alabama and Mississipi, it surely will be game over for Newt. 

It’s been game over for Ron Paul since the start of campaign.  He has been capping out at around 8-12 per cent in each state.  Sooner or later his support surely will start to wane as reality sets in. 

So the big question is, with Gingrich and Paul looking like “also rans”, how many of their supporters in the ensuing primaries will switch to Romney or Santorum?

What? Did I say Romney?  The expectation must be that those who do will move to Santorum in far greater numbers. 

Just look at Virginia where around 80,000 Republicans were motivated to go to the polls simply to register a vote AGAINST Romney – boosting Ron Paul’s proportion of the state vote to 40 per cent.  If this is a measure of Romney’s unpopularity among the GOP base, he shouldn’t count on winning too many converts. 

Romney’s greatest asset is, well, his assets.  He has more cash to spend than any other candidate.  But the perception lingers that he doesn’t have conservatism in his gut.  He appears to lack conviction.  Witness his call to tie future minimum wage increases to inflation at a time of high unemployment. 

As he tries to portray himself as conservative, Romney also is burdened by the highly publicized endorsement of John McCain – hardly a political hero to many GOP voters. 

So while Romney prevailed in the tight Ohio contest, as he had in Michigan, he may now find victories more difficult to come by even while Gingrich and Paul stay in the race. 

If Gingrich suspends his campaign, as Santorum’s backers are urging, this will free a sizeable group of voters to decide the outcome.    

Romney’s supporters said that the contest would be over if he beat Santorum in Ohio.  This is patently not the case.  But Santorum will have to show some “real steel” if he is to actually overcome the well-oiled political machine out of Massachusetts.

It's only money....

Part of the problem with how these questions are viewed is that crises have largely degenerated into party political tugs-of-war.  On the left, a crisis is used to justify more prohibitions and rules.  On the right, a crisis is used to justify de-regulation and reduce government interference in the economy. It is now uncertain whether we can really recognize a true crisis anymore – or whether we even care. 

So, as with beauty, a political crisis is often in the eye of the beholder.  Our acceptance of whether one truly exists can depend more on our general political outlook than on any agreed facts.  Climate change springs to mind as one example. 

We also know that crises are used as a lever – or excuse – for bringing about radical and urgent change.  Shortly after he was appointed Chief of Staff to President Obama, Rahm Emanuel famously stated that, “A good crisis should never be wasted”.  The biggest government spending bill in United States history became law on the back of the 2008 financial crisis.  Restrictive and onerous financial regulations followed in the form of Dodd-Frank.  Meanwhile, the root cause of the problem – the lending practices of government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – were exempted from the legislation. 

Yet the world has moved on regardless.  Isn’t this what always happens when a crisis supposedly happens?  Sea levels never did rise dramatically despite Al Gore’s Nobel Prize-winning movie.  Economic depression didn’t occur in 2008 despite the collapse in the value of mortgage-backed securities and the under-capitalization of banks.  U.S. states like Illinois and California continue to operate despite their near bankruptcy.  The global economy trundles along. 

And even if the debt crisis is a real crisis, what can we actually do about it?  In Athens, Greeks continue to go about their daily business as if nothing much will change, while their leaders’ making solemn agreements on public spending cuts.  Is it any surprise, then, that most people simply expect that this crisis will blow over like all those that went before? 

To put it another way, after years of supposed crises, experience tells us to be skeptical when a new one arrives.  We are crisis-weary.  We simply don’t trust a crisis anymore like we used to. 

Perhaps this helps to explain why many Americans remain unconcerned about the indebtedness of the United States government.   A $15 trillion debt is surreal, not only in terms of comprehending its size but also in terms of what it means.  Why not $20 trillion?  Why not $50 trillion? 

Then again, you don’t have to be an economist to rationalize that somewhere out there is a limit to how much governments can borrow.  Otherwise, they all would have been spending at Obama rates and higher for decades.  The very idea of austerity measures would be something to giggle at.  The key question is whether developed nations are now reaching that limit.  Greece is Exhibit A. 

After years of expanding welfare programs, Europe is finally bumping into the outer wall of the sovereign debt frontier.  The U.S. is firmly in the fast lane, trying to catch up.  It has expanded its debt by $5 trillion over the past three years alone – and that is before adding in the ObamaCare entitlement program. 

Beyond public spending cuts in countries like Ireland, Portugal and the UK, the economic consequences of overspending have yet to be realized.  Free market economists predict a combination of inflation, economic stagnation, high unemployment, the loss of pension guarantees and a general contraction in social and welfare programs.  There will be calls for tax increases but it is well documented that there are limits to the amount of revenue that can be raised from taxation. 

The end result, of course, is that people will be made poorer.  Whether or not you call this a crisis is up to you.

And today's winners are...

On Monday, Barack Obama announced that government-run Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can rewrite mortgage loans for all up to date borrowers who are suffering from negative equity. 

Forget what the White House says about this new initiative stimulating the housing market.  It won’t.  But lower interest rates for a key tranche of borrowers is more likely to provide a jolt to consumer spending than any phony “jobs plan”.  As the President said: “It gets those families spending again.”

The macroeconomic impact will be that of a narrowed down middle class tax cut.  Relabeled and repackaged for sure, but this boils down to a sampling of Reagan supply-side economics. If John Boehner had presented such a proposal, he would have been slammed by the left for wanting to give handouts to the wealthy. 

Of course, the left will be attracted by the greater dysfunctionality this move brings to the much maligned banking sector.  Consideration of job security and repayment history had already been removed from lending decisions in the name of fairness.  Now the President has brushed aside requirements on equity.  Any semblance of logic to consumer lending  has been removed.  A cornerstone of capitalism has been further weakened. 

The tragedy, of course, is that Democrats created the equity trap in the first place.  They introduced and passed the disastrous easy lending legislation that created the housing bubble, leaving many borrowers owing more than the value of their homes. 

To make matters worse, last year Democrats established new restrictions on private lenders that have produced erratic and inconsistent home property valuations.  These have made loans much more difficult to rewrite, tying borrowers to their homes and mortgages even as interest rates have remained at record low levels. 

But while they have tightened regulations in the private sector, Democrats have removed them in the state sector.  Fannie and Freddie are exempt from these rules and the president has now given them an even more unfair edge over private lenders.   Consumers will inevitably turn to the cheaper government deals, leaving Wall Street ever more dependent on political decisions made in Washington, DC.    

Someone might ask where in the Constitution the government is given the power to provide mortgages and the President to determine the terms of lending. 

By picking winners the President can appeal to different blocks of voters and there can be little doubt that with this particular selection Barack Obama has improved his re-election chances.  But the big question is whether enough of these newly-favored consumers will spend their bonanza after years of retrenchment.  The economic and political payoff for Barack Obama could be small if the extra cash is used instead to pay down mortgage balances or reduce other household debt.   

Appropriately, all this was announced in Las Vegas.  Would anyone like to wager against the President expanding the handout to all government-backed borrowers before Election Day?  After all, what could sound more fair?

Yes - by liberals...

In developed nations, governments take wealth from those who have it and redistribute it via health care providers, unemployment checks, low income credits, government bureaucracies, corporate bailouts, industrial subsidies, supposedly green investments and a welter of other social and welfare programs. 

In the United States, the top five per cent of earners pay more income tax than the bottom 95 per cent combined, by a ratio of approximately 60 to 40.  They take in only a third of adjusted gross income.   

Apparently this is not enough. 

You want to really reduce wealth?  You’ve got it.  High tax payments are one thing but something  much more pernicious is looming around the corner.  The impact of massive government borrowing to finance these programs is poised to be exposed to the middle classes as theft on a much grander scale.  

This will be demonstrated when Greece finally defaults on the back of its welfare debt.  When the drachma is reintroduced, it will be worth so much less than the Euro that Greek assets values – pensions, savings, property, businesses, etc. – will free-fall. 

Permanent currency devaluation is the perfect solution for those liberal intellectuals who find compassion in picking other people’s pockets.  It is theft by stealth.  Greeks will wake up to discover that their holdings were not so secure after all.  Their wealth already has been “redistributed”.  Spent.  Gone. 

With three record post-war budget deficits and $15 trillion in accumulated debt, Barack Obama’s America is on the same trajectory.  Today’s welfare is tomorrow’s robbed pension fund and empty cashbox. 

Dependency has taken away the very thing that its proponents claim to offer – hope.  Hope comes not from endless welfare but from responsibility and self-reliance.  Welfare recipients see little hope for advancement.  They have been permanently enslaved. 

As the Occupy Wall Street and copycat protesters have demonstrated, nobody is satisfied.  There never can be enough redistribution and government welfare to satisfy the aspirations of recipients and egalitarians.  An ever expanding sub-culture of dependency has been created that demands ever greater handouts to mitigate the inherent misery from relying on government welfare.   The circle is complete. 

Occupy Everywhere is a cry for help.  It boils down to protests not against wealth or bankers, but against the failings of liberal policies. 

Young people in particular are being squeezed by a system that offers little or no prospect for them to prosper as individuals.  This is the system that has been created. 

How will teenagers respond when they work out that their legacy already has been spent by the political classes?  Will they want to grab their share of what is left?  Will they comprehend that the more wealth that can be commandeered from others, the less hope they will have of ever escaping dependency themselves?   Will there be a backlash against government and in favor of capitalism? 

The lesson of Occupy Everywhere is that welfare should be a hand up, not a hand out.  The government trough is no nirvana.

Sarah Palin’s character was famously butchered and mauled.  Jeb Bush’s surname was a liability.  Mitch Daniels chose not to allow the media adjudicate on personal family issues. 

By any historical record, a slate of Palin, Daniels, Bush, Perry and Christie would have oozed talent – five articulate Governors comparing their successful economic records against Obama’s.  But Perry is the only one running and, given his falling polling numbers, he would have registered as the least articulate of the group.   

Not the media's choice - but can Perry win?

This is not to forget Mitt Romney.  But the former Massachusetts Governor, who is unashamedly on the liberal extreme of his party, has so far been given a clean pass by the liberal media.  Judging by what happened to John McCain in 2008, the criticism, intrigue and innuendo will only be activated once he has secured his party’s nomination.  

Lest this sounds like a case of sour grapes, let’s be clear that the media does have a legitimate role to play in vetting candidates for the most important job in America.  But whereas liberals purport to strive for what is “fair” when it comes to dividing wealth, the same standard doesn’t apply to political reporting.  The basic theme for the liberal media is that the state must safeguard citizens against all possible ills, and candidates are coddled or undermined accordingly.    

For example, if a similar standard of media intrusion applied to Democrats, the 2008 election would have probably looked very different.  Barack Obama likely would have been disqualified by his close relationship to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.  Hillary Clinton might have been ruled out over her dodgy financial gains in futures trading and role in the Whitewater scandal.  John Edwards surely would have been exposed for his sleazy personal affairs that finally became public after the election.  Perhaps Joe Lieberman and Dennis Kucinich would have fought out the Democrat nomination in a thin field. 

Still, the liberal media’s willingness to shield the shortcomings of its candidates has negative electoral repercussions for the left as well.  With so little external scrutiny, the last three Democrat presidential candidates have been a global warming hoaxer, a military embellisher and an economic illiterate.  With good reason, some liberals are openly doubting Barack Obama’s chances of winning a second term.  Greater scrutiny of liberal candidates might lead to more competent nominees. 

Who knows, perhaps the Tea Party would not have emerged as such a powerful political influence if the choice in 2008 had come down to voting for Lieberman or McCain. 

As a political philosophy, liberalism boils down to picking winners and losers, whether it is in the form of political candidates or political policies.  This reveals a fundamental flaw of liberalism.  By definition, it isn’t fair. 

True, the Republican field might have been stronger.  But whoever emerges from the pack can hardly do a worse job of generating economic prosperity than Barack Obama – however the media chooses to spin the contest.

Obama's economic policies have failed

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, family income has descended to 1996 levels and the so-called “poverty level” is now at its highest since 1993, having jumped to 15.1 per cent of the population from 12.5 per cent just three years ago.    

The world’s largest economy is stagnant.  According to Rasmussen, three-quarters of American voters believe that the country is on the wrong track.

While liberals cheerfully blame President Bush for the state of the economy, they have no plausible explanation for the decline nor any answer that will actually stimulate a recovery.   

True, the first recession began in the final months of George W. Bush’s term.  But serious economists and financial writers like George Melloan and Gretchen Morgenson have carefully catalogued the affordable housing policies that caused the financial crisis.  It was liberal philosophy, applied mostly by Democrats, that systematically brought about the economy to a standstill. 

President Obama wasn’t in charge at the time but he backed these policies first as a community agitator, then as a State Senator and finally as an Illinois Senator.  As President he has failed to acknowledge the nature of the problem, repeal the damaging laws or reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Instead he has tinkered with housing schemes and signed into law the Dodd-Frank financial services act, which guarantees government support for large banks.  Not surprisingly, Wall Street is still in a slumber. 

Worse, at a time when government debt was already at levels that discouraged private investment, the President chose to borrow at higher levels than ever. 

Even the International Monetary Fund warned in April that United States government spending needed to be brought under control.  In August, S&P downgraded U.S. government debt.  The Eurozone sovereign debt crisis strongly signals the need for fiscal retrenchment by the world’s major economies. 

Not only has the President missed all these economic indicators, he has also failed to notice the change in the political winds.  Electoral reversals in gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, the rise of the Tea Party, the 2010 elections that gave Republicans control of the House of Representatives and, this week, the loss of Rep. Wiener’s safest of safe Democrat seats in New York. 

In spite of all this, the President has announced more of the same failed policies, proposing new deficit spending of $447 billion. 

After telling Congress, “You should pass this jobs plan right away”, the President appealed to an audience in Raleigh, North Carolina with, “If you love me, you’ve got to help me pass this bill!”  Really? 

It is hardly surprising that President Obama’s calamitous leadership causes dissent in Congress and the nation.  In a Parliamentary system, it would be past time for him to go.  The leader of the governing party with such a woeful record would be challenged, as happened last year in Australia when Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister.  Under the American system, the President is elected by the people and cannot be removed by his party. 

President Obama has been revealed as incompetent and unimaginative.  In the past few days he has been unabashedly arrogant.  Some Democrats are beginning to question whether he is electable.  For the sake of all those struggling through economic hardship, let’s hope that he is not.

Rejecting the entitlement culture

One of the problems with the fiscal malaise is that it is reported in waves, according dates and deadlines.  The media fixated on the idea that the U.S. government would have run out of money by 2 August and all sorts of dire consequences were presented.  Journalists surfed on the idea that social security checks would not be sent out, the military would not be paid, the U.S. would default on its debt.  None of these were actually true but, hey, it all helps sell television advertising and newspapers. 

In the same way, we are told that social security will run out in 2037. 

Meanwhile, unemployment, growth and inflation statistics are published in monthly ripples that may look disheartening when they are published, but will be replaced by new statistics just one month later; and so on. 

The vague notion that what matters is getting beyond certain dates fuels the mistaken conviction that systemic problems can be fixed once a crisis arrives.  These waves of urgency come and go, leaving us with a vague sense of economic immortality.  Everything will be fine.  It always is. 

But one of the lessons of the downgrade of U.S. debt by Standard and Poor’s is that these notional dates are not really important.  We will never reach a date on the calendar when the United States defaults on its debt or get to a point when social security runs out.  Long before then, the financial markets will anticipate the coming tsunami and adjust accordingly, raising the price of debt.    

So, despite the Fed’s stated intent to maintain low interest rates beyond the next election, the level of debt and general economic practices being followed by the U.S. government will inevitably cause problems ahead.  Interest rates will have to increase, government debts may have to be re-written, the dollar will weaken further and asset values will fall. 

Doubtless, when this happens Democrats will condemn the financial markets and try to intervene.  But, as Margaret Thatcher once said, “You can’t buck the market”.   If liberals don’t like the market, they shouldn’t be playing “Borrowing Gone Wild” in the first place. 

For regular folks, all this means a bleak future unless the big government liabilities can be reformed.  That means making changes to social security, Medicare and Medicaid sooner rather than later. 

Failing that, we are looking at the malaise: higher unemployment, more mortgage defaults, more bankruptcies, uncertain entitlements, inflation, reduced purchasing power from savings, fewer job opportunities, lower pay, recession and significantly reduced prosperity.    

Perhaps Obama, Reid, Pelosi and their ilk have served one useful purpose by demonstrating conclusively that massive government spending doesn’t create a prosperous economy.  Parallel problems in Europe show the economic limits of an entitlement culture.  But until more people reject the notion that massive spending on entitlements is the path to nirvana, the debt problem and all that it means will remain.

Let me be clear. I have no idea how the federal budget works...

From 2008, Democrats were able to dictate the direction of economic policy because they controlled the White House and Congress.  Their philosophy was to borrow vast quantities of money to stimulate the economy, generate growth and create jobs.  At the same time, Democrats moved to increase regulations on businesses, largely through a slew of financial and environmental measures.

The results of two and half years of Obamaism were deafeningly announced last weekend, with revised growth figures for the U.S. economy in the first quarter at just 0.4 per cent.  Second quarter growth was a miserly 1.3 per cent – and based on recent practice this will most likely be revised downwards too.  The U.S. is barely keeping itself out of another recession and unemployment lingers above 9 per cent.

All of this contrasts with Ronald Reagan’s results in the 1980s when, faced with similar economic circumstances, he reduced taxes and created a climate for businesses to expand.  This produced growth rates in the order of 8 per cent and falling unemployment.

Students of economics may wonder why politicians can’t learn and apply simple lessons like this.  Common sense suggests that our leaders should repeat what works and reject what fails.  But this is to ignore politics.

Even now, liberal voice-piece the New York Times is saying in its “news” pages that reduced spending “will weaken the economy because many industries and workers are directly or indirectly dependent on government activity.”  Milton Friedman discredited this notion in the 1970s by explaining how government spending crowds out private investment.

And the New York Times mislabels spending cuts as “austerity measures” despite the enormous waste of resources that has occurred over the past two and a half years.  Its editorial writers refer to Republicans wanting to “slash and burn the economy”.  Wealthy liberals might wish to ponder a little more about what real austerity and hardship is.  They could start by visiting the struggling victims of their slack economic policies.

Yet Democrats portrayed their opponents as the ones causing problems in the debt ceiling talks.  Paul Krugman wrote that: “Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions.”  It’s as if this is all just some kind of intellectual mind game that liberals are playing.

President Obama preferred to chide Republicans from the sidelines rather than bring the parties together.  On Friday, he tweeted that: “The time for putting party first is over.  If you want bipartisan compromise let Congress know.”  He then tweeted the twitter handles of only GOP members.  No bipartisan leadership there.

On Sunday, the “Jeerleader-in-Chief” went on television to claim credit for the deal and said the agreed spending reduction of $1 trillion over the next ten years would result in “the lowest level of annual domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower was President.”  So inaccurate is this statement that it is not clear whether Americans should be doubting his financial literacy or his honesty.

What the president is actually referring to is non-security discretionary spending projected ahead ten years.  This part of the budget amounts to around one-eighth of annual domestic spending and excludes the military, Medicare, Medicaid, social security and debt repayments.  Worse, ten per cent of this discretionary budget was recently reclassified as mandatory, making any direct comparison with the past misleading.  And so much can happen to Congress’s discretionary spending that a ten year projection is completely meaningless anyway.

The real news in all this is that the Tea Party has delivered another success.  After the dramatic mid-term elections in 2010, tax increases were scrapped and liberal plans for a second so-called stimulus binge were trashed.  Now the Tea Party argument has once more prevailed in Washington, DC and spending cuts will be enacted as part of the debt ceiling compromise.  The spending ship has been turned.

These cuts are fairly small relative to the size of the U.S. debt, around $2 trillion over ten years, so the crisis has not been solved.  But a significant step has been taken in the right direction.  The Tea Party has changed the fiscal debate.

Ahead lies the even bigger challenge of reforming entitlement programs.  These massive spending liabilities threaten to strangle prosperity unless they are reformed.  No doubt this forthcoming debate will lead to more toxic posturing from the left.  Liberals are already screaming about “extremists” and “extortion”.

Voters have a choice.  Thanks to the Tea Party, many Americans have come to see liberal economics for what it is.  The New York Times might even figure out that phrases like “government economic assistance” are an oxymoron.

As in Europe, in America too. 

Greeks are rioting to maintain their entitlements, German and French leaders fret about their over-exposed banks and European bailouts come and go.  

Meanwhile, the United States is stuck in a debate over whether to raise its debt ceiling, the threat of default is wielded by the White House of all places and the economy stagnates. 

Walking away from America's economic problems...?

Where is the global leadership?

Two and a half years into his Administration, it has become obvious that Barack Obama’s economic policies have been ruinous and have nowhere to go.  His Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke admitted recently that he had no idea why the economy was doing so poorly.  The prospects for prosperity look as dim as at any time in the last fifty years. 

In America, “regulate, spend and tax” policies have delivered high and sustained unemployment, tepid economic growth, a mountain of debt and massive future liabilities.  Europeans face a similar set of circumstances, with a debt default looking unavoidable in Greece and possible in other countries.   

These problems are not being solved.  In Europe, leaders are kicking the Greek debt problem down the road.  In the U.S., President Obama recently decreed that the problem with the economy was tax breaks for corporate jets and decades old depreciation rules for oil exploration.  Simply extraordinary. 

President Obama’s latest move was to claim that seniors would not be receiving their social security checks if the debt ceiling was not raised.  This is completely false.  Americans must wonder if they have a leader or a community agitator in the White House. 

The U.S. debt ceiling will most likely be raised in the coming days but liberals everywhere should be on notice that endless spending brings economic consequences. 

Shakespeare’s advice in Hamlet looks as solid as ever.  America’s borrowing addiction has to stop now.

Expendable...

Journalists from the News of the World paid private investigators to illegally hack into the mobile telephones of murder victims, families of British servicemen and celebrities in order to obtain information that could not be acquired lawfully.  And it bribed police officers to illegally supply investigative material for exclusive stories.   

While most commentators have focused their attacks exclusively on Rupert Murdoch and his empire, history will draw two big lessons here.  First, the closure of the News of the World was the moment when print journalists officially became expendable.  Rupert Murdoch was prepared to close the News of the World because it scandalized his company at a time when he was bidding to purchase the sixty per cent of BSkyB that he didn’t already control.  Under UK law, consummation of this multi-billion investment hinged on the fitness of Mr. Murdoch’s company to be the owner. Ultimately, he withdrew the bid.  But the big money is in television.  Newspapers are a dying breed.  Official. 

Still, many in the journalistic profession continue to delude themselves about the value of their output, as if the quality of their prose was in some way related to their net worth.  Most print journalists work for loss-making or declining organizations (there are a few exceptions) and their employers subsidize production because of the political power and influence they can wield.  Unfortunately, many staff writers (yes, even the most talented ones) are little more than pawns in a far bigger power play. 

This leads to the second lesson.  Politicians cozy up to newspaper owners, editors and writers because a good public reputation makes them more electable.  But the way they do so largely escapes public view. This is now being challenged in the UK through the current Parliamentary hearings, and may lead to changes in attitudes in other countries. 

Newspapers cannot guarantee electoral success but the advantage that their support brings still makes them kingmakers.  Tony Blair was elected with the backing of News International’s daily tabloid The Sun.  In 2010, it switched allegiance to David Cameron’s Conservatives.  Newspapers can also make politicians unelectable.  In the United States, Senator George Allen of Virginia lost his Congressional seat, and saw his presidential ambitions destroyed, by the Washington Post. 

When he was recruited to be Cameron’s press adviser, former News of the World editor Andy Coulson had already been implicated in one phone hacking scandal.  Now he faces prosecution and a possible prison term for his part in the News of the World’s illegal news gathering methods.  Cameron also attended the wedding of Coulson’s predecessor, Rebekah Brooks, who may go the same way. 

In true Casablanca style, Prime Minister Cameron is shocked by what has been going on.   But as the resignations mount up – including those of Scotland Yard’s two most senior policemen – it now seems conceivable that the scandal could also cut short his term as UK leader. 

Legislators should now take steps to make their dealings with the media more transparent.  British Members of Parliament, for example, could expand the Register of Members Financial Interests to include details of all their interactions with news organizations.  More broadly, democracy is better served if close relationships within the ruling elite are better understood by the public.