Buckets of whitewash!

Two more cases this week:

1) "Smeargate". Sir Gus O'Donnell (who, let it be remembered, wrote and published a book with one of G.Brown's loyalists) has decided that he will not institute an enquiry into how many people at number 10 knew of the impending smear campaign. He prefers to take the word of the minister most likely to have been involved. There is also the strange "The Prime Minister has been assured that no-one....". By whom was he assured?

If there is nothing to hide, why not merely reveal the recipients of the notorious smearing e-mail(s)? Or has the evidence already been (illegally) destroyed?

G.Brown's attack dogs have been active for so many years, most often admittedly biting fellow members of the Labour Party. Journalists hint, because they are afraid of the dogs, that dirty briefings are commonplace. But of course, McCavity the main gainer does not know anything about them.

2) The Damian Green affair: - the arrest of the first opposition MP for hundreds of years for doing his job, in fact doing what G.Brown had done and boasted about doing when he was in opposition.

The Home Affairs select committee this morning, - a committee with a built-in Labour majority, published their own report. (The timing cannot be coincidental, but was to take some of the sting out of the later report by the head of the CPS.) The select committee claimed that it was not politicians who were to blame, but rather the over-excited senior servants who called in the police with talk of "national security". The explanation of the CPS that what was revealed did not threaten national security, harmed no-one and in parts was in the public interest, surely is a reprimand for civil servants and their political masters.

Of course, Jacqui Smith, like G.Brown over smeargate, was not aware of what their underlings were doing and hadn't suggested anything. So she is quite innocent, and someone else's head will roll to save her.

Wherever the buck stops, it clearly stops well short of the ones who should be accountable, and buckets of whitewash will be used to ensure this.