James Cook

So a couple of this yet again, the sentence continues and continues and continues despite the full stop, which Adam's point was, you know, the government saying we're sorry we messed this up despite that full stop being at the start.

Yeah, you know, there are umpteen, perhaps infinite, it seems at the moment, chapters in the Lord Mandelson fiasco saga.

Attach what description you want.

We've obviously had this concentrated blast of it over the last seven days in a row now at Westminster because the Guardian's scoop around all of this broke at around three o'clock on Thursday afternoon of last week.

And here we are recording it live.

It's almost seven o'clock on Wednesday evening and it's been making news every day for seven days straight.

And yes, as you say, it's going to make news again in its own way with Cat Little, who is the chief civil servant in the Cabinet Office when she appears in front of the House.

Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

She's had something of a walk-on role, if you like, in the news of the last couple of days because she featured in a story that The Guardian also had in this context around who else knew prior to the Prime Minister.

that the recommendation of the vetting, the vetters, was that there should be effectively a red box tick for Peter Mandelson's vetting.

Well, Cat Little, alongside Antonio Romeo, the Cabinet Secretary, was...

aware, but certainly those in government in Downing Street have been keen to point out that in their view, the outlook of those two civil servants was very different from that of the now former lead civil servants in the Foreign Office, because they went through a process seeking to inform

their, if you like, political masters, rather than, as Downing Street would see it, the opposite from Sir Ollie Robbins.

So Cat Little, who was in the Cabinet Office, in the thick of the whole process of the churn through of loads of documents in government before they go, before Parliament's now published via, in some instances, the Intelligence and Security Committee to work out what can see the light of day without breaching...

uh sort of international security concerns so cat little will be quite something on thursday and then yeah morgan mcsweeney will be quite something too next week and catherine what do you think of this cat little appearance what do you think we might learn i mean am i wrong and i'm you know literally 400 miles from london at the moment i was a lot further than that earlier today because i was in aberdeen at one point today but from this sort of removed position i

Is there something in the notion that there is a battle going on here between the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office?

And is that what we're going to see play out a bit more when Cat Little appears?

Yeah, and just a reminder, and lots of newscasters will know this, when you mentioned the humble address there, that was this parliamentary mechanism by which the Conservatives forced out a lot of this information, to put it very, very simply.

Now, look, more generally, Catherine, how would you assess the relationship between this government and the civil service?

And that punching a bruise thought, I think, is fascinating.