Analysis

SPECULATION, rumour and counter-rumour are stalking the antique corridors of Westminster as journalists and politicians try feverishly to join the dots and make sense of an increasingly intriguing police inquiry into the cash for honours affair.

The picture is still unclear and joining dots can, of course, be an inexact art, often leading to a misleading image.

Truth be told, no-one among the press and media, at present, knows what is really going on. Only John Yates, the deputy assistant commis-sioner at Scotland Yard, knows - or could know - the full picture and, for the moment, he is keeping mum.

Of course, Westminster being Westminster, the lack of information will not stop the rumour-mill from turning. "Blairgate", as it has inevitably been dubbed, has become a media monster that is now feeding itself.

The latest dot-joining exercise came yesterday. We were told Tony Blair had been interviewed for a second time, under the same conditions as his last, pre-Christmas grilling - ie not under caution but as a witness. Helping police with their inquiries, so to speak.

The only difference was that it took six days for the news to come out. The Metropolitan Police asked the prime minister to stay silent about his 45-minute interview which took place inside No10 last Friday morning. Why? For "operational reasons".

Yet, it just so happened, four days after Mr Blair's cross-examination, Lord Levy, his fund-raiser-in-chief, was probed for up to four hours at a police station.

Interestingly, this time round he was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Which most observers surmise points to an alleged cover-up of sorts.

While we do not know for certain, it does not need an Inspector Morse to at least suspect the two interviews were connected in some way; that the reason the police asked Mr Blair to keep schtum was because they did not want Lord Levy to be tipped off about their line of questioning.

Tom Kelly, Mr Blair's word-shrewd spokesman, who insisted he too was kept in the dark about his master's latest police interview until late on Wednesday, revealed that only a "tightly knit" group knew about the police's latest assignation in Downing Street.

Asked about who precisely was in this select group, Mr Kelly declined to say but noted: "The prime minister would have observed the proper procedures." In other words, he would not have told "Lord Cashpoint".

Needless to say, within the Westminster Lobby there was a good deal of annoyance about being kept in the dark, with claims the press, and thereby the public, had been inadvertently misled about the truth. However, Jack Straw, leader of the Commons, insisted it was "absolutely proper" for Mr Blair to comply with the police request; to do otherwise would have risked "compromising the investigation".

One could have imagined the outraged conspiracy headlines if the prime minister had refused to comply with the police request and had indeed tipped off his good chum and tennis partner Lord Levy.

The tension within SW1 is tangible at times. Ministers and MPs are outraged by what they see as deliberate leaks of snippets of information from the Met while Scotland Yard is believed to be increasingly irked by what it sees as political pressure from the government.

It must be stressed that, despite all the lurid "Watergate-style" headlines, no one has yet been charged. Indeed, it might be no-one ever is. Yet despite Mr Straw's assertions that the government is getting on with business, the drip-drip of claims and counter-claims is hobbling government and threatening to make Mr Blair's exit from government a deeply messy affair.

Were any of his inner circle in No10 to be charged, then the cash for honours affair would be propelled into a whole new dimension.

Alarm bells would be ringing all over Whitehall and the pressure on the prime minister would intensify dramatically. His position might even become untenable.

As the police probe lengthens and deepens, the stakes appear to be getting higher.