UK: Downing Street may not have been given the full facts about the reasons for resignation, writes Frank Millar
Yesterday was a black day for Tony Blair. In a manner he can never have thought possible, David Blunkett emulated Peter Mandelson in becoming the second minister in his government to be forced to quit the cabinet a second time.
Inside 10 Downing Street, there is disappointment at the enforced loss of yet another close friend and key ally. There will be keen awareness, too, that the Blunkett affair will survive all the questions about the departing minister's personal and business dealings - only to bequeath a more enduring set of questions about the prime minister's judgment.
As one veteran Labour-watcher put it, this was inevitable on matters of broad principle, regardless of the circumstances surrounding Mr Blunkett's personal tragedy.
Having previously had to accept the resignation of a minister who was deemed indispensable, Mr Blair then restored him to cabinet - prematurely, in the view of many - only to see him succumb a second time under a cloud of scandal. Not, of course, that the prime minister allows that there is here any real scandal at all.
Indeed, by Mr Blair's own account, Mr Blunkett was guilty of a mistake but not of anything considered a sackable offence.
After the pain of two early morning meetings in Number 10, an agreed script was produced which stated for the record that Mr Blair had wanted Mr Blunkett to stay but that the minister himself had decided that his position was no longer tenable. We can be pretty certain that this line will stick, not least because, should any detail emerge to challenge it, Mr Blair might be found to have misled the House of Commons.
As for the mistake finally acknowledged by Mr Blunkett yesterday, both men were insistent that this related only to the minister's failure to consult the appropriate Whitehall watchdog about various paid posts he took up during the short interval between his resignation as home secretary last December and his return to cabinet as work and pensions secretary following the general election in May.
Having investigated the matter, Mr Blair had satisfied himself that Mr Blunkett was not guilty of any impropriety. Detecting no evidence of evasion, the prime minister suggested instead that Mr Blunkett had registered his various business interests - the most controversial and potentially lucrative of which was entered into barely a fortnight before his widely predicted return to the cabinet - in the register of MPs' interests.
Thus, compounding the fallen minister's earlier "spin", Mr Blair suggested that Mr Blunkett's mistake had arisen out of "honest misunderstanding" about the requirement on him to consult the advisory committee on business appointments about any posts he intended to take up on leaving the government last year.
Few listening MPs would have disputed Mr Blair's assertion that Mr Blunkett is in many ways an admirable man who has overcome huge personal handicaps and served his country well. But many - not least on the Labour benches - were dumbfounded by the prime minister's conclusion that Mr Blunkett "goes with no stain of impropriety upon him".
The impropriety laid against Mr Blunkett was that he breached the ministerial code of conduct. In the now famous foreword to this document, no less a person than Mr Blair himself insists that it is a code which must be observed by ministers in both letter and spirit.
The cabinet secretary, the chairman of the committee on standards in public life, and Lord Nolan - the man who drafted the code for a government elected on the promise that it would be "purer than pure" - all found Mr Blunkett in breach. Mr Blair accepted that finding - but then seemed to say that it did not or need not matter.
Which raises the obvious questions: if a minister can breach the ministerial code and still be considered fit to do his job why have the code in the first place? And if - as a year ago, when Mr Blunkett was first forced out after the business of the fast-tracked visa for his former lover's nanny - there is no stain on his character, why let him go at all?
As journalists sniffed behind the official versions yesterday, one obvious possible explanation was that Mr Blunkett had not told Number 10 the whole story.
Another may have been the mood of Labour MPs, many reluctant to see Mr Blunkett retained to reform welfare and cut invalidity benefits after learning of his stake in a company from which he or his family might have expected a 20-fold return following its planned flotation on the stock exchange next year.
"Greed" was the word on many Labour lips yesterday. Not quite the "sleaze" of the Major years, perhaps, but warning enough for a prime minister losing more friends than he can afford while many in his party grow still more impatient for the handover he foolishly promised them would occur before the next election.