Someone's lying

Now here's a funny old thing.

La belle Rachel S. wrote this morning in the Telegraph (see post below) that she was 'reliably informed' that Balls and Straw had as good as squared up to each other, Prescott-style, during a Cabinet row over who was 'responsible' for 'youth crime'. (This doesn't mean, or at least I think it doesn't, that there is a government department charged with promoting youth crime, at any rate not yet, and that each was seeking to take the credit for it, or more probably to deny the other credit for it.)

On the other hand, the dinky Ben Brogan of the Mail has since written that the claim has been comprehensively denied by No. 10, who, upholding the highest of the Civil Service's high-minded, disinterested standards, have dismissed it as 'total b******s'. Brogan asserts that by 'Westminster standards' – code for standards not out of place in most sewers – this amounts to 'a fairly comprehensive denial'. Meaning Rachel's dead wrong. She's been sold a pup.

Just how 'reliably' Sylvester was 'informed' is impossible to say.

Just how impartial the No. 10 press office is is much easier to say.

So was Sylvester being led up the garden path? If so, by whom? And why? Labour 'insiders' bent on doing down Gordo? Surely not!

Or is No. 10 simply hoping to bluff this one out (code for 'lying')?

Place your bets.