Former Ambassador turned Conspiracy Theoretician Craig Murray has written something really bizarre about the Bob Quick fiasco:

Yet in all the acres of coverage in the newspapers, and all the hype on TV, nobody seems to have noticed the real story.

It was an accident that Bob Quick had his secret document on display as he was photographed entering Downing St. But it was no accident that he was photographed entering Downing Street.

Craig in a fine example of the Law of the Excluded Middle claims that because he himself has been through the front door on No 10 only with a senior delegation or attending a party, no-one else can use that entrance for attending meetings. Thus:

The front door is for people the government wants to be seen – hence the permanent stand of photographers which captured Bob Quick. People arriving to brief on secret matters go in through the back door, or more likely through the Cabinet Office.

So why did the government want us to see that Bob Quick was entering No 10? The only possible answer is that, had things gone more smoothly in the arrest of the “Terror suspects”, the government would have paraded the footage of Quick entering no 10 as evidence that it was really Glorious Gordon and Genius Jacqui who had directed the operation and saved the world – again.

It is very, very wrong – it violates the whole spirit of the constitution – for politicians to be involved in arresting people.

To aid the dim-witted and short-sighted, he adds a passage in bold:

The photo leak – which could indeed have jeopardised a security operation which may or may not prove to have been vital – was caused directly by the excessive and completely unnecessary involvement of the politicians in policing detail.

What? What?

Here is what I have posted on Craig’s site:

This is just too much. Are you being serious?

As an FCO official I have walked through the front door of No 10 on my own on numerous occasions to meet No 10 officials, watching with amusement the looks of the bored media folk on the other side of the street who no doubt were wondering who I was. So your whole thesis promptly collapses.

Maybe back in the days when you were a junior official briefing Lady Thatcher (before they put up the elaborate railings and security barriers?) things were different, ie officials were expected to use a different entrance.

Now if you are on the No 10 visitors’ list you just show up at the main police entrance to Downing Street and walk to the front door. You press the bell and a policeman opens the door, checks your name and rings the person you are visiting to come and collect you. 100% prosaic.

In the Bob Quick case, he may have wanted to look important for vanity reasons. But to look at the quite uninteresting fact that he used the front door and then assert that ‘the only possible answer’ is that he arrived at that entrance for later TV management reasons (and/or that it shows that politicians are involved in deciding the timing of arrests) is beyond ridiculous.

You maybe should apologise for misleading your readers.

Regards,

I have no idea whether the police are briefing No 10 officials or even the Prime Minister on impending terrorist operations. There may be an operational or policy case for doing so. Or maybe something constitutionally improper was planned.

All I know is that nothing whatsover about any of this can be deduced from the fact that the hapless Bob Quick used the No 10 front door, rather than a back entrance so well trodden by Craig Murray and countless other more junior functionaries down the decades.