It is not just the reputation of ministers and their bagmen that is taking a bashing at the Hutton inquiry. So is the reputation of Britain's intelligence services. British Intelligence has been subverted. The nation's front line of defence has been catastrophically damaged by New Labour's spin machine. The tawdry ethics of Robert Maxwell's Daily Mirror newsroom have infiltrated the secure Cabinet Office rooms occupied by the Joint Intelligence Committee. The merest suspicion that an intelligence agency has succumbed to spin undermines its credibility and authority. But there is more than mere suspicion here. Recent events highlight a process of politicisation that has been going on since Tony Blair arrived in Downing Street in 1997.
