and, apparently, using the post-paranoid age’s patented warrant-less taps and hacking provisions, which Blair‘s own government shoved down the throats of a complacent nation. Whoops, won’t do that again soon, will ya?

The Guardian has a report on the panic at #10:

Yates was the man who authorised the arrest of Ruth Turner, the rather earnest daughter of a theology professor and, more importantly, head of government relations at Number 10, on suspicion of perverting the course of justice. The move has set the government and the Metropolitan Police at war. What began with four police officers banging on the door of Turner‘s flat in Waterloo at dawn now threatens to end in a constitutional standoff, raising fundamental questions about the relationship between politicians and the law.

And more of the same, with bonus “senior government officials interfering with an investigation” here.

Downing street was plunged into a full-scale war with the police yesterday after senior officers hit back at criticism of the way the cash-for-peerages investigation is being handled.

They responded after Cabinet Minister Tessa Jowell expressed bewilderment at the manner in which Ruth Turner, Number 10’s director of devolvement relations, was arrested at home at dawn – while former Home Secretary David Blunkett accused police of ‘theatrics’. Yesterday Scotland Yard made clear its anger at what it sees as undue political pressure. Sir Chris Fox, the former president of the Association of Chief Police Officers who remains close to Scotland Yard, accused political critics of ‘scheming to discredit a very important inquiry’. Chief constables feared a potential threat to police independence, he added.

and, best of all, Iain Dale has the story about how it was the coppers hacking into the computer system at #10 which provided the smoking gun. This would, of course, have been illegal but for the shiny new surveillance measures that have been enacted since The War Against Terror began.

…An independent IT expert was then sent in by detectives, with the permission of Downing Street, to look through communications records, it claimed. But the Sunday Telegraph suggested that detectives had obtained high-level permission to “hack” into the IT system remotely…