Is the Cabinet secretary about to warn Tony about Cherie?

For more than 100 years one overriding principle has governed British public life: the fastidious separation of public and private interests. Those who have worked for the state — whether in the armed forces, the Civil Service, as MPs, or in some other way — have never used their office for private gain or any other selfish purpose. These principles were first explicitly set out at the time of the Gladstonian reforms of the public service in the mid-19th century and have been adhered to since under all governments, whether Liberal, Labour or Conservative. There have of course been many individual lapses from this high ideal; but the system itself has been extremely robust, surviving throughout the 20th century.

This special idea of strong, disinterested public service is now in rapid decay. There have been two principal aspects of disintegration. The first manifested itself with a ferocious attack by a new political class on the traditional institutions of the state. This process was extremely regrettable, insidious and corrupting. Nevertheless it was not venal. It arose not from private greed but from a failure of understanding by the generation of politicians that came to power alongside Tony Blair and New Labour in 1997. They obscurely felt that it was wrong that a political party once in power should be unable to use the institutions of state — judiciary, monarchy, Civil Service — for its own particular ends.

But human nature is frail. Over time the appetite to politicise the institutions of state has turned into a readiness to take personal advantage as well. Lack of respect for the proper process of government has shown itself in two ways. It has led on the one hand to the shambles and abuses identified — to give just one example — by Lord Butler in his report into the preliminaries of the Iraq war.