The story goes that when a young Oxford graduate, with all the right connections, applied for a job at the Conservative Party Research Department in the early nineties, a mysterious phone-call was received that was traced back to Buckingham Palace:

‘I understand you are to see David Cameron, I’ve tried everything I can to dissuade him from wasting his time on politics but I have failed. I am ringing to tell you that you are about to meet a truly remarkable young man.”

The rest they say his history…

Fast forward twenty years and someone in the Palace has dipped in a less welcome oar into Cameron’s darkest hour. Though denied officially by both the Royal household and Downing Street, Palace sources are letting it be known that they were “gobsmacked” when Coulson was taken into the Tory fold and ultimately into government. Not least because it was Prince William’s phone messages that triggered this entire mess. There would be a certain, though still highly unlikely, irony if the someone in the Palace was to both make and break Dave…