LONDON -- Will Prime Minister Tony Blair's government fall as a result of the inquiry being led by Lord Hutton into the apparent suicide of weapons expert Dr. David Kelly? Unlikely.
What is being revealed by the days of painstaking questions in the law court on the Strand is not the wicked machinations of a singular individual, either Blair himself or his director of communications, Alastair Campbell.
Rather it reveals how 90 percent of the workings of government are never glimpsed by the public -- and little more is seen by even the most experienced and trusted journalists. And it reveals how more than 90 percent of the work of the government does not even involve government ministers at all, but is carried out in a humdrum way by civil servants (some of them full-time career personnel and a growing number of them employed by state agencies) and an uncounted number of consultants or others on short-term contracts.