MPs yesterday opened an inquiry into special advisers following the bad behaviour of Gordon Brown's SPAD, Damian McBride.Yesterday's hearing was organised by the Public Administration Committee, whose chairman Tony Wright (Lab, Cannock Chase) is a pious eunuch. That is, he holds views about our out-of-control ruling class but keeps firing blanks. For witnesses yesterday Mr Wright had summoned: Lance Price, a former spin doctor to Tony Blair; Jonathan Baume, who runs the top civil servants' trade union; former Whitehall permanent secretary Sir Richard Mottram; and a Times journalist, Peter Riddell, who is a genial, experienced colleague but, I think he would accept, would never qualify as one of Fleet Street's feared contrarians.

Eloquent Mr Price disclosed that he and Tony Blair were known sometimes to gossip about the sex lives and mental health of Labour's political opponents. Can this be the same Tony Blair who invented the human rights act and stoked the equality industry, at whose core is an idea of individual privacy and the wickedness of judging others by their sexuality? It sure can, folks!