Sleaze like a green slick of slime has slithered and coiled itself around the dark heart of the Labour government which is following the same tacky trail as the previous contaminated Tory one. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Labour’s witch-doctors have spun themselves into the ground trying to bury that particular truth.

The liberal left love slogans, but being liberal they don't abide by them. The “don't do as I do, do as how I would have you do” syndrome. Liberals are as authoritarian as Joe Stalin or Adolf Hitler but not as honest. Especially cynical of the liberals is the statement stolen from the feminists that the personal is political. The idea is that personal issues lead to political action. That seems to be acceptable to the liberal left but the flip-side that the personal affects the political is conveniently ignored. Liberal leftists seem to believe that dishonesty in sexual relations and personal affairs is a definite qualification for politically responsible posts.

British cabinet ministers and United States Presidents with dodgy personalities are positively encouraged to hold the strings of the public purse. Poachers make great gamekeepers so it follows that those who are best at helping themselves will be even better at helping the poor, after all it's the economy, stupid! And the Anglo-American way. Salute the standard bearers of New Labour liberalism. Peter (handout) Mandelson and Geoffrey (helping-hand) Robinson, the ex-minister for Trade and Industry and Labour’s ex-Paymaster General. Such outstanding and inspiring personalities have substituted themselves for the idealistic socialist ideology which was once part of the labour and co-operative movement.

Politics is personal in the New Labour universe and so it should not be surprising that the New Labour government is riven by personal rivalries and disputes. As freewheeling Charlie Whelan found out to his cost when personality presentation has become more important than policy, the spin doctors themselves find that they are spinning into the news as more interesting personalities than the masters they represent. When the medium overwhelms the message the messenger must go.

The Labour government has failed and is faltering. Its message of despair is not even worthy of a spin. Labour ministers and their hacks are dizzy with power. Tory Blair is arrogant and out of touch with the very people who elected Labour to deal with the sleaze and cronyism that had become so typical of John Major’s type of Toryism. Labour has caught the sleaze disease from the Tories. The crusaders have become the crooks and have fallen out over the division of the spoils of government.

The Labour governments spin doctors have succeeded only in highlighting rather than hiding the fact of Labour corruption and in so doing have added to Labour’s problems. Tory Blair is hoping that he has solved his spin doctor problem by having had them fight each other and/or fall on their own swords. Maybe Tony reasons that in true Highlander fashion they will reach the situation where “there can only be one “. The “one” is Alistair Campbell the prime minister’s press secretary.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed. We all know what to expect of this oily and patronising "representative" of on-call sleazeville. More of the same. Even the slickest spin doctor will not help Tory Blair for it is the British System that is sick with sin. Scotland must detach herself from the English disease, it's time to spin out of the Westminster orbit forever.