Josh Simons should have resigned weeks ago. Failing that, he should have been dismissed.
That he wasn’t speaks volumes. A Prime Minister who is serious about standards does not wait for an ethics adviser to state the obvious. Sir Laurie Magnus has now concluded what many could see from the start: that a minister attempted to undermine journalists for doing their job. Asking questions. Holding power to account.
That is not a grey area. It is a basic test of democratic instinct.
Instead of acting decisively, the Prime Minister chose to wait. He chose process over principle. And in doing so, he projected weakness where clarity was required.
History rarely remembers the technicalities or the delays. It remembers whether leaders were prepared to make simple moral decisions when they mattered. The question now is why the Prime Minister felt unable to act himself, and why he needed cover to do what should have been done from the outset.