The British government was bruised but unbowed today after two of its many spin doctor media advisers resigned over an embarrassing public row on the day Queen Elizabeth attended her sister's funeral.
The spat between Ms Jo Moore, a special adviser to Transport Minister Mr Stephen Byers, and Mr Martin Sixsmith, who headed the ministry's press department, was over whether to use the day of Princess Margaret's funeral to bury bad news about trains.
Mr Byers, a senior member of Labour Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair's cabinet and already under fire for massive problems on the railways, welcomed the resignations. He said his officials now had to focus on crucial reforms of the train network.
"There had been a breakdown of trust. It was damaging to the department and potentially damaging to the government. They had to go," he told Sky News television.
The row sparked fresh calls for the government to curb the power of its special advisers.
"Number 10 has got to rethink its attitude both to civil servants and in the way there appears to be a group of people operating out there who are neither elected nor civil servants," senior Labour parliamentarian Ms Gwyneth Dunwoody told BBC radio's Today programme today.
The First Division Association, a trade union representing senior civil servants, said it wanted new laws governing relations between minister, civil servants and advisers.
It was the second time that Ms Moore had been involved in a row over using major events to obscure bad news from her department.
She had to apologise after sending a memo to officials on September 11th, just hours after the attacks on New York and Washington. She suggested it would be a good time to release unflattering statistics they had been holding back.
Mr Byers leaped to her defence. Mr Blair publicly scolded her but let her keep her job despite a barrage of criticism.
Yesterday, opposition parliamentarians accused Mr Byers of lacking judgement and called for him to quit.
Opposition members also accused Blair of having lost control after spending much of the five months since September 11th touring the world shoring up the US-led anti-terror coalition.