Nixon and wallpaper....
Did you really think that the PM would be ousted over a few rolls of wallpaper? More fool you!
There is so much wriggle room in the rules and regulations governing the behaviour of this and any other government that landing a fatal blow is almost impossible. With the full power of the Civil Service behind it and a system that has more holes than a Swiss cheese, the PM was always going to escape.
The willingness of his investigator to accept complete tosh so long as it was just about impossible to prove that the PM was deliberately lying was astounding.
But not so astonishing as the naiveté of much of the commentariat. They seem to think that every scandal will be the new Watergate, when Watergate took years to unravel. It took hours and hours of forensic and merciless cross examination and a paper trail of lies, crimes and money a blind man could follow.
If the White House had been investigated by senior and respected member of Congress, Nixon would still be there.
The general whiff of sleaze however does not go away, and the PM stinks to high heaven. The public mood has changed, he is no longer trusted or liked.
If anything gets him it will be that.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
“the naiveté of much of the commentariat. They seem to think that every scandal will be the new Watergate”
What you describe as naïveté, I would put down to deliberate sensationalism, and it is a large part of what has put me off reading the Guardian. They drip fed months of not so salacious tidbits under emotive ‘gotcha’ headlines during variously the Mueller investigation and the Belfast ‘rugby rape trial’ among others. It fuelled their readership with a false sense of righteousness (myself included) and lead to a shattering of confidence in the justice systems when the findings were finally published.
There’s much to decry about the systems in place (such as the numerous loopholes etc that you’ve alluded to; the in built bias, and inclination towards self preservation, of such a small cabal of people from almost identical socio economic backgrounds, including former school pals; the pitiful punishments when wrongdoing is eventually proven), but the coverage is either deliberately sinister or they are being too naive as to be unfit for the task of holding public figures to account.