The more this so-called Kelly Affair drags on the more it resembles an episode of the television series “Yes Prime Minister”. In one episode, Prime Minister Jim Hacker is in discussion with his Principal Private Secretary Bernard Woolley (pictured below) about leaks & secrecy. Woolley comments that leak is an irregular verb, as it conjugates,
“I hold a confidential press briefing, you leak, he is charged under Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act.”

Tony Blair & Michael Howard have had their first skirmish in the House of Commons over what Hutton will or will not say when he finally publishes his report (in early February) on the Dr. David Kelly affair – at this stage its not the full knock’em down & drag’em out exchanges – more an advance to contact. Prediction – serious handbags but I doubt if the miserable Scot, Gordon ‘tax & spend’ Brown will end up as PM. Nonetheless, the stakes are high.

On 22 July 2003, Blair told journalists that he "emphatically" did not authorise the leaking of Kelly's name. However, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, Sir Kevin Tebbit told the inquiry in October that Blair had chaired the key meetings to discuss the "naming strategy".

Michael Howard challenging Blair to stand by his July statement.
"Either the Permanent Secretary or the Prime Minister is not telling the truth,"
Indeed, we are likely to hear a lot about the difference between "leaking" and "releasing" in the coming weeks.

Quite why the taxpayer in expected to fund yet another government inquiry into who leaked what to whom, is quite beyond your correspondent. Everyone seems to have forgotten what the central issue is here; why on earth was a Ministry of Defence weapons scientist meeting a BBC journalist in hotel rooms & giving him highly sensitive information?

The rest is completely obvious: Andrew Gilligan was going to sensationalise the information that he processed, to suit his & the BBC’s anti-war political agenda; Tony Blair & the Ministry of Defence were going to leak Kelly’s name & hang him out to dry.

The other day, in an increasingly rare coherent moment, I pondered what Kelly was thinking when he embarked upon his course of action – did he really believe that he won’t be caught. For a supposedly intelligent man, he was either remarkably naïve or stupid – most probably a combination of the two.

As another character from the aforementioned show, Sir Humphrey Appleby comments,
"The ship of state, Bernard, is the only ship that leaks from the top."