Squeaky voices

If we were so minded, we could take The Independent headline and its story and rewrite them, better to reflect the reality. Rather than say that a question mark now hangs over Cameron's judgement, however, we would have to resort to the use of rather more words. Thus might we say:

After years of stumbling around in the dark, ignoring the self-evident and blindingly obvious fact that Cameron's judgement is and always has been suspect over a very wide range of issues, we have at last discovered that he is a seriously flawed man and have decided to present our discovery to you in the guise of "news", thereby assuming that you are so thick that you hadn't already noticed and that you need to pay us clever people to tell you.

Now, we admit that this does not have quite the same immediacy and striking power as a Sun headline. But then we am not clever like wot these professional journalists are, who are at the centre of things and know what's really going down.

On the other hand, we could say that the Fourth Estate, in now reporting that which most of the nation already knew, is having to deal the embarrassment of playing catch-up. And this is the best they can do.

What must be terrifying these little dears, though, is the parallel discovery that so many people had come to their conclusions unaided, without the mighty MSM to guide them. The brighter ones may even be putting two and two together, realising that most people don't actually need their clever commentary in order to know what to think.

Even then, old habits die hard. Still, they chase after that single, elusive thing that they all strive after: setting the agenda. That, they think, is where their power lies – not as yet realising that the world has changed forever. They have lost their monopoly control of information, and are just squeaky voices, competing for a hearing in the growing cacophony.