Honest politicians and other flying pigs . . .

What is it about politicians that they see honesty as being some sort of condition to be avoided like psoriasis or athlete's foot. You get the feeling they get up every morning and spray themselves with some sort of jungle formula extra strength honesty repellent.

Pretty well anyone with two brain cells working in unision has worked out by now that employing Andy Coulson as head of communications was about as bright as putting King Herod in charge of child care.

Now if David Cameron was to hold his hand up and admit that he dropped a right clanger we might all accept it. We all make cock-ups, make decisions which, with hindsight, might just have been made differently, if at all but not Cameron.

Like politicians everywhere he is genetically programmed to avoid ever admitting a mistake. It is not as if Coulson has just been fingered, saint to sinner in one damning moment. The guy was a potential poisoned chalice before Cameron slipped him a nice little number in return for, presumably, an extra avenue into the halls of the Murdoch empire.

Cameron was warned but perhaps the prize of patronage by News International was too great to resist. Now he just looks a prize prat and looks a bigger one every time he tries to justify the appointment. If only he had a head of communications who could tell him about honesty.

We may all be doing Andy Coulson a grave injustice. He may not have known a thing about phone hacking, about bribing police officers and all the other illegal goings on at the News of the World. But, as I have said before, if he had no clue about what was going on that would make him the worst editor Fleet Street has ever known, held in contempt by everyone beneath him. A suitable candidate for such a powerful role? Cameron obviously thought so.

Sir Paul Stephenson fell on his sword when his links to Neil Wallis, a former deputy editor of the News of the World, came to light. Cameron's response was as predictable as the sun rising in the East - yet more flannel and whitewash. If it wasn't a mistake then we need a real explanation not cobblers and waffle.