Craig Thomson is right about one thing: A Current Affair’s pursuit of a prostitute who claims she slept with the embattled MP seven years ago is most certainly “gutter journalism”.

But there’s plenty of others wallowing in the bottom of the barrel. Editors, journalists and MPs and their staffers. We don’t necessarily exclude ourselves. It’s ugly, putrid stuff. Should we keep following it? How can we not?

The opposition has new-found concern for his welfare. He’s a man under “enormous pressure”, Tony Abbott now says, calling on Labor to put the needs of their MP and his family first:

“The Prime Minister is the one who is clinging to his vote and his Labor colleagues are the ones who are insisting that he should stay in the Parliament.”

The whiff of political desperation almost overpowers the sordid saga itself, certainly. But it’s Thomson standing defiant. And for what? To save a political career that only has 18 months to run regardless? To save a rotten government in the same position?

It’s just not worth it.