Patrick Rock, a 62 year-old bachelor, is one of the most powerful people you have never heard of, serving as the PM’s fixer in Downing Street. Rock and Dave go way back, they worked together as special advisers in the Home Office under the progressive days of Michael Howard. The story goes that on the day John Smith died they went drinking in the Two Chairmen, where they “both agreed that Blair coming meant that we [Conservatives] would be f**ked.” He was almost a Tory MP too, fighting and losing in Portsmouth South in 1984… to Mike Hancock. Rock had been working under the radar at Downing Street since 2011, where his crowning achievement was accidentally leaking private documents to a photographer. Among his responsibilities were drafting the government’s proposals on internet porn filters. ‘Research’ of which seems his most obvious get out of jail card – the Pete Townshend defence…

It seems Downing Street were first made aware of the situation and called the cops on Rock themselves, three weeks ago. Unusually it has taken weeks for the arrest of one of the Prime Minister’s closest advisers to become public. In news management terms we have had in the intervening period Harriet Harman’s well known historic NCCL / Paedophile Information Exchange links dredged up in the Mail. This was after Rock was nicked but before it was made public… by James Chapman, in the Mail.

UPDATE: The Nonce Finder General asks the same question:

@tom_watson me, yesterday

— James Chapman (@jameschappers) March 4, 2014