I bumped into Alastair Campbell on Wednesday. He'd just been watching Gordon Brown's angry Commons denunciation of Rupert Murdoch and all his works – and felt he'd done well.
We'll come back to that, but remember, Blair's former spokesman is a tribal Labour loyalist above all else, so Gordon's relentless campaigns to undermine Tony no longer count so much in his larger world view.
But just as Brown's self-exculpating speech reminded his audience, Tory MPs furious, some Labour MPs uneasy, that he'd blocked various Murdoch commercial initiatives long before their final falling-out – he seemed to be implying that the "cosy relationship" ended when Blair left No 10 – so Alastair wanted to remind me that Tony had taken tough decisions too.
Such as? They prevented Murdoch taking over Manchester United, a plan which was briefly a dead cert in 1998, but was blocked by the Blair government on competition grounds. Would he have been a better owner than the wretched Glazer family? It wouldn't be difficult, would it?
Who knows, if he sells his UK newspapers to someone like Richard ("Asian Babes") Desmond of the Express – it's been rumoured too – we might look back nostalgically on the Murdoch era. "Ah, Rupert, at least he kept his clothes on."
It's worth recalling these incidents because they put them into perspective and undermine convenient myth – on the left at least as much as the right – that all the parties are "as bad as the others".
They're not. It was Margaret Thatcher who gave Rupert his crucial government breaks, notably exempting the infant Sky TV from the 1990 Broadcasting Act.
It's also not true that Murdoch is the only bad boy on the block, the only one undermining politicians or even the police. I had a note from an old, rather grand, ex-colleague on my local paper the other day.
"You do realise we were paying a copper £50 a month for tips?" he asked. No , I didn't, but I was – and remain – a bit naive. I did see money change hands in the pub on my next newspaper, though only once.
Do these kind of backhanders happen in other countries? Of course they must, plus a great deal worse. There are 1,000 Jean Charles de Menezes-style police shootings every year in his native Brazil and they don't pay compensation. Bribery, torture and other corruptions? Of course, in some places. In the US there are 2.3 million people in jail!
Police officers are not always the best paid and some people get to the top without being what I'd call very thoughtful. Just look at those senior Scotland Yard officers interviewed by the home affairs select committee this week. Sue Akers, now in charge of the hacking probe, sounded fine, but the others were a bit ropey, to put it kindly. Tory MPs were pretty appalled too.
While we're on the subject, I met a well-informed minister on the circuit who was wondering why the anti-terrorist squad (whose ex-boss Andy Hayman was especially hopeless with the MPs) wants to bag all the big investigations for itself and then complain it's too busy with terrorist threats to have time to investigate phone hacking.
It's thus worth recalling that, for instance, it was a couple of dozen anti-terror officers who tracked down and arrested Tory MP Damian Green in that disgraceful, cack-handed incident in 2008.
It's unfair to tar every force and every senior copper with the same brush, just as it was to abuse all MPs over the expenses scandal – or every newspaper for the failings of News International. The Telegraph crowd are complaining today that they shouldn't be in the dock too. I bleed for them.
Yet it was Telegraph Towers which systematically sought to put all MPs into the dock over expenses (and with a pro-Tory slant too) and the Telegraph which sent two toothsome young reporters to Vince Cable's constituency surgery to entrap the old buffer over rude remarks about his coalition partners while suppressing his anti-Murdoch sentiments because they shared them. Even the flakey Press Complaints Commission (PCC) condemned that scam.
It also led to Jeremy Hunt taking over the BSkyB decision. It's a funny old world when the Telegraph's commercial interest in blocking Murdoch has to be rescued by the muesli-eaters at the Guardian via the phone-hacking exposé.
But hang on. I just cited the remarks of an unnamed minister, one of several MPs and ministers to whom I talked on a lively day. Would David Cameron's new transparency rules for relations between press and politicians require the minister to record "spoke to Mike White of the Guardian for five minutes, the old bugger is losing the plot" in some departmental record?
I don't think so and I certainly don't want Lord Justice Leveson to reach that conclusion either, even if he is advised to by the likes of George Monbiot, who got untypically over-excited in this week's column.
What Cameron has in mind, I think, is proprietors like Rupe, editors and senior executives, not us pond-life, the kind of lobbying and deal-making behind closed doors which all interest groups with good access seek from all governments, big pharma, bankers, multi-media groups like News Corp and the BBC, trade unions of course, industrialists. It should all be logged: much of it already is.
But at a time of crisis you have to ask yourself the question: do we get it wrong at pond-life level? George cites Janet Daley, the ex-Trotskyite rightwing columnist of the Sunday Telegraph, claiming that: "British political journalism is basically a club to which politicians and journalists both belong.''
Apparently we all share the same Etonian values and assumptions, take dictation from them, go to their country houses (should that be flats?) at the weekend, etc etc.
American visitors are shocked by it all, says ex-Comrade Janet, who has obviously never worked in Washington DC or had much to do with working journalism below the limousine-Conservative level here. Never mind, it is the standard attack on lobby journalism with which I have lived for many years.
It is often made by people who are both ignorant and unaware that all forms of journalism – financial and sports are prime examples – where the dangers of producer capture are acute. Don't Hollywood agents routinely seek "copy approval" before interviews with their clients? I believe they do.
What I always say is that it boils down to how folk behave as individuals. Some people are eager to be flattered. Others are resistant to blandishments. Some want to be part of the project, others dislike politicians of all parties in equal measure. Whatever their temperamental inclination they have to work within the cultural framework of the paper for which they write.
I'll give you a topical example. When Tony Blair was under the cosh of the cash-for-honours probe in 2006-7 I took the view that there was little chance that the inquiry would produce any prosecutions and was surprised that it took over a year to reach the same conclusion.
I was suspicious of what I thought were probably leaks from the Scotland Yard squad designed both to embarrass and divide the Blairite suspects. I wrote an article, but the Guardian took the view that I was barking up the wrong tree and did not print it.
Fair enough. I rewrote my researches and got a piece published in the Spectator, courtesy of Matthew d'Ancona, then editor. You may find it here alongside a contrasting pro-police piece by the current editor, Fraser Nelson.
Who was in charge of the Blair inquiry? I almost forgot. It was John Yates, the copper who sounded so defensive explaining to MPs this week why he took only eight hours to decide against re-opening the hacking inquiry.
Funny old world, eh?
Gordon Brown's speech? No one could doubt how hurt and angry the ex-PM feels about his and his family's treatment by the Murdoch press. Yet he proved – yet again – a divisive figure, eager to blame the civil service for stopping him launching an inquiry (he was only PM!), but also strangely willing to socialise with his tormentors despite all those injuries suffered. When irate Tories accused him of keeping a few rottweilers of his own, he became indignant.
A strange performance then, which different papers have treated differently overnight. Scorn from the Mail, sympathy from the Telegraph, less importance accorded it by the Guardian. Readers can choose.
That's the point of diversity, which includes George Monbiot and Christopher Booker (Sunday Telegraph) taking great bites out of each other on green matters.
That's as it should be. Let us hope the crisis now underway does not diminish it. In the wider economic dramas, it is a real fear.
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