Government whips have launched a witch-hunt to track down the Labour politician blamed for sending copies of a vicious attack on Gordon Brown to all 350 of the party’s MPs.
OK, more of the Brown Government tearing itself apart, you might think. Same old same old. And you'd be right, actually. But there is a quite beautiful little detail which makes this particular episode one of their stupidest:
The investigation follows a ferocious verbal assault on the Prime Minister last week in the Guardian newspaper written by former Brownite cheerleader and Left-wing pundit Polly Toynbee.
Within 48 hours of its publication, every single Labour MP received an anonymous letter containing a copy of Ms Toynbee’s near-hysterical tirade via the Commons internal mail.
That's right: a Polly Toynbee column from The Guardian was mailed to every single Labour MP. Had it not been, presumably they might never have seen it. And so quick! This column from a daily paper was dispatched within a mere forty-eight hours.
You can see why the whips would want to track the perpetrator down before Labour MPs start receiving week-old Hansard transcripts or something.