Green, Leaky Tories: They Just Don't Get It Anymore

I'm not sure Tories in opposition all these years, and wet behind the ears as most of Cam's team are, understand, even begin to understand, the real debate about leaks and leakers. Iain Dale proves yet again that leaky vessels can make even more noise than empty ones.

In an illogical post even by his standards he tells us that Lord Butler leaked to the media today, in broad daylight, the startling news that the police "often" refused to investigate leaks. From this it rather follows from that that they "often" or at least "sometimes" didn't refuse to investigate leaks.

And I really don't know how Mr Dale can say: "there are clearly no national security issues" when none of us yet has the full picture. So much pontificating, particularly from Tories but also the damned incontinent blethers of the mass media, from so very little evidence.

The point of the requested investigation we have been told by Sir Peter(23:28, thanks Iain!) David Normington, head manadarin at Home, was and is to get the running of the Home Department back on an even keel after too much, too persistent and too gathering pace leakage.

And of course to defend against the potential for an established and increasingly emboldened leaker to get wilder over time, with or without the connivance of their Tory master.

Iain and others may argue that it is journalists and oppositionists job to procure and publish leaks but it is certainly also for the government, the police, the judiciary to try to stop them.

In British History leaks from the Home Department and others have undoubtedly cost lives and prevented progress. This sometimes being the very point of them. The State has a bounden duty to protect sensitive discourse, sensitive decisions and sensitive information from publication. Don't Tories get that any more.

Have these wet behind the ears young muppets drifted so far from the days when they understood what it was to be responsible for government that they've lost the ability to think?

SHOCK HORROR: The Patrician Barrister Bob Marshall-Andrews has allegedly - no link provided - opined that the most Proletarian and left-footed Speaker of modern times should quit. The second comment, about the BBC using the words "Gordon Brown" when referring to Gordon Brown are a load of fun. Like BMA.

MEANWHILST: The Guardian's diarist Hugh Muir has caught on to the Labour Party's Favourite Tory Blogger zeitgeist but is perhaps a shade too cruel I think? In covering the fall from grace of Mr Dale vis-a-vis his ponderous fortnightly Telegraph drivel thusly:

• Why would Labour types be championing the prospects of Tory blogger extraordinaire Iain Dale, you might ask. Is it because of his ill-fated campaign in Norfolk North in 2005, when he lost by 10,500 votes, or his failure to win the nomination for Maidstone, when he didn't make it past the first interview? Or his stewardship of the unsuccessful David Davis leadership campaign? Or is it because his two-year stint as a columnist at the Daily Telegraph seems to have come to an end? It is all of them, and though it might be tempting fate, he is, they say, someone they would like to see at the heart of David Cameron's operation. They'll provide references and everything.

FOOTNOTE FACTOID: Mr Dale added around 10,000 to the Lib Dem majority despite regular £10,000 drops from Lord Ashcroft who is now backing Iain's absolutely and robustly non-party political organ Total Politics. Sponsored loads of Tory Conference fringes, not sure about others?

STEVE BELL'S PAGE: Is Here, though can't see his shopping channel just now. The above cartoon referred to Home Office and Police leaks which were related to national security.