They also lead us to a few universal truths of government. Lord Phillips's cautiously worded report has irritated the commentators and deprived us of a few convenient scapegoats to name and shame before moving on to the next subject. But in the process a few inconvenient truths go missing. When government fails it is a combination of the personal and the systemic, the temperamental and the structural. And nowhere more so than here.
Government is naturally gnostic.
People become ministers because they want to know secrets. The idea that government is full of secrets dies hard - even in age of instant information and increasing access. Most government is dull. But the insecure Ministerial Ego Erectus needs the fantasy of a private access to the state secret to compensate for its amphibian condition. Behind the rise of that ego lies a slimy trail of conventional crawling and compulsive creeping.