We are watching the tormented turn on the tormentor. Not so long ago Britain’s political establishment was laid low by the media furore over fiddled parliamentary expenses. Now, Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire has been rocked by accusations about the hacking of phones and bribery of police officers. The settling of scores has not been pretty.

It’s fair to say that the relationship between politicians and the press has always had its stresses. Mr Murdoch is the most powerful media baron of modern times. He is not the first. In the 1920s, the then prime minister Stanley Baldwin famously described the media’s exercise of power without responsibility as the prerogative of the harlot. The likes of Rothermere and Beaverbrook were scarcely gentle souls.

More recently, the terms of engagement have been at once incestuous and suffused with hostility. The media has claimed for itself a status and legitimacy to rival that of elected representatives. Proprietors – notably Mr Murdoch – have pulled political strings behind the scenes. Prime ministers have defied them at their peril. Most of the time, mutual interest has kept the tensions in check. The two sides have squabbled by day and wined and dined together by night.