Hacking

Had​ ​I put £1000 on a Tory​ ​Parliamentary​ ​majority​ ​in March​, when the odds of that​ ​outcome​ ​were​ ​rated as low as​ ​100-1, I'd have made £100,000.​ Had I then placed my winnings on Jeremy Corbyn to win the Labour Party leadership at the start of the contest, when he was a 200-1 outsider, I would have found myself on 12 September with £20 million. But I didn’t: Cameron and Corbyn's victories may have made someone a fortune, but it wasn't me.

Those two elections have another winner, someone who has run no campaign but has recently returned to a position of power after four years away from the job. No prizes, no bets on who that is: Rebekah Brooks, the CEO of News UK, who returned to work on 7 September, having seen off the accusations made against her about phone hacking. On returning to the position, she told her staff: 'I’ve worked for this company since 1989 doing a variety of jobs from making the tea to becoming CEO 20 years later. It’s hard to describe how good it feels to be home. And the Sun is shining!'

Brooks is now more powerful than ever. She's survived a trial at the Old Bailey, seen off her accusers and done nothing to offend Rupert Murdoch, and now her friend David Cameron can have her to supper again. In Jeremy Corbyn, Brooks has a near-ideal enemy to aim the arsenal of Murdoch's media empire at: he's left-wing, he's a vegetarian, he rides a bike, he lives in Islington, he's been married three times. In the scandal about journalists breaking into other people's voice mail, at the behest of superiors, the other meaning of the word 'hacking' tended to be forgotten, although it's what the tabloid press does as a matter of course.