As a poll shows Cameron is taking a hammering over this crisis, the Downing Street fall-out from the arrest of Coulson is leaking out. Steve Hilton is blaming Ed Llewellyn, the PM’s chief of staff, for not passing on warnings to Cameron from the Guardian about Coulson. The most neuralgic issue is that there was one degree of separation between the PM and an axe-murderer. The Guardian told Steve Hilton, who in turn told Ed Llewellyn, that Andy Coulson had hired knowingly hired a criminal, Jonathan Rees, after he got released from a seven-year sentence for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by planting cocaine on an innocent woman even though he was on remand for conspiracy in an axe murder. Rees had been charged with conspiracy to murder Daniel Morgan, a former business associate, who was found dead in a pub car park with an axe in his head. Nice.

Ed didn’t pass on the warning to Cameron. Hilton says he is at fault for not doing so. Ed counters that if Hilton thought it so important, why didn’t he tell Dave himself? The image of the PM employing people who employ people who associate with axe murderers is not a good one…