The story floated in the Telegraph last week that a allegations about to be printed by Sunday tabloids would be met with strident legal action potentially alerted the wider audience that to a breaking scandal. This was rash and perhaps too clever.

In this age of the captivating story, the facts of the matter are a lot less interesting than the rumour. The sparks, seeded on the Internet, have kindled a building story that William Hague really is gay, after being photographed with Christopher Myers, in matching sunglasses, having supposedly spent the night together.

The 25 year old special advisor quit yesterday over what he called “malicious and untrue allegations” about his friendship with Hague. The rumour was not a new one to the Commons’ corridors, which had wondered for years about the sexuality of the Boy Wonder of frontline Tory politics.

But in this new media age, the internet has teased the story out of speculative cocoon state and pumped it full of helium, forcing Hague to react defensively by offering up some very personal details about his and his wife’s difficulties with conceiving children. Numerous miscarriages later, their marriage is otherwise a happy one, it transpires. Put some sympathy in to the mix, and you’re on to a winner.

But that hasn’t stopped a flurry of speculations, retractions, disagreements and combative viewpoints reaching the media as news, all culled from a single rumour. Last week, the story that any allegations about to be printed by the Sunday tabloids would be met with strident legal action even floated in the Telegraph, meaning that a much wider potential audience for this breaking ’scandal’ stood to attention like so many media-savvy Bisto kids.

It may well have been a rash decision to suggest such strident action would be forthcoming, as it feels as if there are too many people working too hard to bury this story. Hague’s press and media team are seemingly out of joint.

What they’re forgetting is that, in the 21st Century, the Hogarthian unwashed care little whether an MP is gay or straight. What they do care about is honesty and credibility. In an internet era where conspiracy theories breed like bacteria on blogs and the social networks, fascinated speculation is the order of the day and it has to be managed with care. If a ‘perfect’ marriage is not so perfect, expect a critical backlash.

Not me. I have perceived a new threat. I am wondering nervously what the reaction will be when the nation wakes up and realises that they have, in David Cameron, an ex-PR man as Prime Minister. An ex-PR man, moreover, of whom Jeff Randall – quoted in the Mirror – said: “In my experience, he never gave a straight answer when dissemblance was a plausible alternative.”

Could this then be the worst time ever for the PR profession, as it becomes clear that, alongside Cameron, there is an ever-increasing presence in the Commons of MPs who have stepped out of the world of lobbying and PR and into the world of government? Will the infiltration of Parliament by corporate-suited, silver-tongued chancers destroy our reputation for good?

Not so long ago, all we had to worry about was the brain-drain from journalism into PR, particularly in the wake of Alistair Campbell’s success with people like Stuart Higgins, Phil Hall and Ian Monk turning gamekeeper, presumably after seeing just how much fun Campbell was having in the close shadow of power.

Now, though, the poachers turned gamekeepers are turning landowners as well, and I wonder how many PR people will begin to see the job as just a stepping stone to greater power, with one thought in their heads: “We can do what Dave’s done. It could be us!”

The old Conservative MP and railway enthusiast Robert Adley (now dead) referred to lobbyists as ‘leeches’. He said: “There is an increasing army, frankly, of spivs around this place, some of whom seem to be able to attract the services of MPs for piddling sums of money, who are responsible in my view for perverting this place.”

And now the ‘leeches’ are taking the place of MPs like Adley: Margot James, just elected to Stourbridge, ran Shire Health Group, a public relations and clinical trials organization; Aviva head of public affairs Tracey Crouch has become Conservative MP for Chatham & Aylesford; Weber Shandwick director Priti Patel won Witham. And that’s just for the Conservatives. A Brand Republic article gives details of many more – click here to see it.

PR is becoming a feeder environment for Government and the influence starts at the very top. My worry is that the PR profession, which has never been seen in as harsh a light as estate agents and bankers, could find the tide shifting against it if the trend continues and more spin is spun in politics, even across the back benches.

The current concerns in the US about lobby power and the integral, incestuous part it plays in US politics have lead to an attempt to legislate against too much insider trading in the Senate (click here to read more). With so many people in positions of power in Westminster with PR and lobbying backgrounds, what does this say about the power of PR to influence the new house?

Forget expenses! I think that the new unbearable truth on the block is that this is the dawn of a new, corrupt age – an age of middle men in sharp suits with a special line in smooth talk and fancy promises. The dawn of a new High Profit-Margin age of public affairs. I believe lobbyists will run amok and that the new breed of politicos, who have come from the lobbying and corporate PR world, will be considerably more receptive to their dark arts.

This is a revised version of yesterday’s post.

The failure of anyone to take meaningful control of the country in the wake of the General Election says a great deal about the hype that the media work up as a cappuccino froth of sound bites. It felt like going to a bad movie – the trailer was exceptional but the movie itself is overlong and a terrible letdown.

We may have had debates, but the analogue TV hype didn’t change voters’ hearts. We may have seen an upsurge of the digital agenda, but Twitter and the new transparency still doesn’t reach the soul of the country, doesn’t reach the grassroots. The election has forced us to question the people pulling the strings.

As Labour, Conservative and Lib Dems slug out a coalition, power-sharing or some other solution, the media and politicians are running to catch up with the fact that they spent all night rubbishing the exit polls (which turned out to be correct) and creating hours of vacuous TV that did not capture the public mood.

It’s a communications issue – the metropolitan and media elite are just not listening to what general populace are and have been saying, whether it’s the stream of complaints about Andrew Neil’s vacuous filler with D List celebs during the BBC’s election broadcast, the graphics and polls that say nothing to anyone, or the fact that the nation wants a change and has no real way, in the current voting system, of effecting it. I guess those that had a vested interest in this arena had to keep canvassing and using the pre-election hyperbole.

And as it turned out, there was no Clegg-mania, just a Parliament-wide decrease in trust. No record numbers at the polls – a few got high turns outs but only a few. After all the hyperbole and the grand predictions, it was little more than a damp squib. For the most part, the great unwashed had heard all the hype many times before and were not about to be converted to any other cause by digital means, or by the smug assumptions of the media or politicians. The only swing was towards dissatisfaction, and there’s no electronic gadget that can show that.

The media and the Westminster village are terribly insular and just don’t seem to get that there is an upsurge of people who have spotted that they’ve been hoodwinked. The public, in their indifference to manipulations, may yet shake up the cosy status quo – this has been, on all levels, an election about wrestling for control.

But the weekend has seen the Westminster village fighting hardest for control – the political classes have been keeping us away from the real issues by using the media as a canvas to paint and posit theories as to how the aftermath of the hung parliament might play out. Realpolitik and the bitter truths of the brutal practicalities of coalition have been hidden. The media have been spreading the same facts in slightly different packaging all over the news for days, feeding us what the politicians perceive to be good for us, rather than the truth.

Next up after that is a debate at the University of Westminster on Monday, February 15th on Celebrity Brands: Desire, Dollars and Danger? It’s an equally topical debate, asking if we are near the limit of public interest in celebrities, or if there is no limit, whether celebrities mirror or lead society and if they need or deserve greater protection from the media. Bearing in mind the Tiger Woods case and the more recent John Terry meltdown, we’ll also be discussing what the risks and benefits for brands of associating with celebrities are.

Chewing over the issue with me are Max Clifford, Julian Linley (ex-Heat editor and now creative director of Bauer Media), and the advertising guru Trevor Beattie. The debate will be chaired by Trevor Morris, Visiting Professor of Public Relations at the University of Westminster, and the co-author of ‘PR- A Persuasive Industry?’ It should be a fascinating evening.

Gordon Brown may have expressed his apologies, may have “ensured that there are new rules so that this cannot happen again” but Westminster is a notorious whispering gallery and the press have been pecking up the strands of scandal dropped there for years to feather their nests. That is surely going to continue, outside official channels, as it has in the past.

It occurs to me that this frenzy of outrage is more an expression of fear on the part of the traditional media; fear that their sources may be decamping to the ultimate whispering gallery that is the internet, where rumour, conjecture and slander can live with considerably less fear of court action.

Bloggers like Guido Fawkes and Ian Dale are getting to the meat of a story more quickly, more effectively and with a wider reach than the analogue media; they must be chilled to the bone at their inability to lead the story. The papers are losing control and trust, hence their vicious reaction. If they can help halt the tittle-tattle’s flow towards the net, they will.

And this sort of diatribe has been part of the political mix forever. The metropolitan dinner party and lobby circles in Notting Hill, Hampstead and Westminster lap it up but, hypocritically, publicly disown it when outed.

The sad thing is that this latest round of technological, net-based spin and whisper is borne out of Barack Obama’s positive and hugely successful campaign to become President of the USA. But Britain’s political thinkers are so ingrained in negativity that they have inverted Obama’s campaign tactics and made something poisonous with them.

Consider the net a wire service, a huge, powerful story feed where everyone who wants it can get the message at high speed – delivered to their mobiles the moment it goes up if needs be. Psy Ops campaigns on the net are simple and easy to run, but it’s ludicrous and hypocritical of the media to suggest that this evil propaganda device is a new phenomenon. It’s just running at the speed of thought now.

The key soldiers in the Psy Ops political war on the web are ex-newspaper men and women and there are plenty of PR people sticking their members into the swill pit. But politics has always been a dirty, ruthless and cynical game and the only way out of this mess is for people is to stop glorying in the ruthless gossip and disinformation and take a more positive outlook on life, political or otherwise.

I’ve seen friends destroyed by the sort of tactics that McBride proposed to use – they haven’t been in public life for years and won’t be coming back unless a new attitude comes to the fore. They just don’t have the recourse to justice that the seriously wealthy have. There are a lot of casualties out there who’ll never get a fair crack of the whip despite the PCC.

What we need is a realignment of thought, not a few rules that are little more than sticking plaster placed over a crumbling dam.