Mr Campbell, who had told Mr Byers and Mr Blair after 11 September that Ms Moore had to go, had always resented Mr Byers’ determination to keep her. This time, he put it even more bluntly to the Prime Minister. Enquiries to Downing Street about her future were met with cold silence Friday was to be the day of reckoning. “Everyone knew it was going to be clean-up time for Moore-gate,” says an insider.

Mr Byers told Ms Moore on Thursday that she must go.But Mr Sixsmith’s version of events was also raising questions. A distraught Ms Moore told Mr Byers that it would have been impossible for her to have arranged to release details of rail performance targets on the day of Princess Margaret’s funeral since plans for that announcement were finalised the week before the Princess’s death. And why had the email been leaked? It was rumoured that the two tabloid journalists who broke the story had met Mr Sixsmith before the leak Asked about this link, the No 10 spokesman replied coldly. “We don’t have an electronic tagging device on him.” It was the first indication that Mr Sixsmith was vulnerable.Sir Richard Mottram, Permanent Secretary at the department, said that the account that Mr Sixsmith had given Downing Street of the emails had been misleading – a grave offence for a civil servant, if not for a spin doctor His position was untenable, Mr Mottram said. Mr Sixsmith agreed to accept the pearl-handled revolver.Ms Moore’s resignation letter, hurried and self-pitying in tone, was written in high anger on Friday: “Clearly there are some individuals in the department prepared to invent stories about me.” She swore undying loyalty to the Labour Party and its struggle for a “fair and just society”, in the manner of a modern martyr. Mr Byers was left to pick up the pieces of a poisonous office farce, commenting that a “breakdown of trust had occurred in the department” and that to restore “trust and confidence”, Ms Moore and Mr Sixsmith had to go.

The Conservatives, doggedly pursuing the neatly coiffured Blairite scalp of Stephen Byers, called for his resignation.The Department of Transport is not the only place where trust and confidence are in short supply. Downing Street’s uncertain handling of a terrible week betrays a malfunction at the heart of government. Mr Campbell, it is said, is beginning to show signs of job-weariness and may not see out the second term. An allegation of influence-peddling turned into a bizarre set of unanswered questions about the efficiency of the Downing Street machine, the conduct of a British ambassador and renewed questions about New Labour’s probity in the face of donations. A feud between two members of staff ended both their Whitehall careers, caused further damage to Mr Byers and raised questions about Mr Blair’s grip on the machinery of government. The Prime Minister flew off to Italy on Friday to meet Silvio Berlusconi. Getting away from it all can never have seemed more attractive..