On Sunday we heard the ’shock horror’ allegations that the Prime Minister occasionally loses his rag with his civil servants prompting the Tory spin doctors to call for yet another inquiry in order to maximise perceived political embarrassment for the Government. It appears that Conservative high command lack any sense of irony as chief spinner for David Cameron is the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, who an industrial tribunal has just found guilty of bullying himself!

It would be extremely convenient for all concerned with the rebranding of Cameron’s Conservative party if another unholy row about Mr Coulson, he of the phonetapping furore, can be avoided. The last thing that Cameron needs is his press chief once again engulfed in the type of controversy which led to his resignation from the News of the Screws. But it does seem that Mr Cameron had few qualms about such matters when it comes to who works in his office. If Cameron becomes Prime Minister, Coulson moves into Number 10 despite his past involvement in bullying and phonetapping scandals.

In the scramble to smear Gordon Brown there have been some distinctly unedifying moments. Perhaps the lowest point was the intervention of the appropriately named Christine Pratt, chief executive and founder of the National Bullying Helpline whose continued existence must now be in doubt. In her haste to help out the Conservative Party, Mrs Pratt not only breached her duty of confidentiality but has failed to stand up any of her claims. She began by disclosing that her organisation had received “three or four” calls from staff at Downing Street, then changed her mind and said it could have been “two or three” but she’d have to check, and then she said the calls may have come from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, a Department totally separate from Downing Street which hasn’t existed since May 2006. And finally, under further questioning, it turns out that she wasn’t even sure that the complaints were about the Prime Minister.

David Cameron must already be regretting jumping in with both feet to a manufactured row which is fast turning into a botched exercise in political dirty tricks based on nothing more than a few anonymous sources whispering to a journalist with a book to sell. Now that all of the reputable patrons of this so-called confidential helpline have resigned in protest, not only at Mrs Pratt’s unprofessionalism and breach of confidences, but at the commercial involvement of her husband in what supposed to be a charity, I predict that very shortly that Mr Cameron will no longer wish to be featured so prominently on their website.