Dowing Street yesterday hoped to end bitter feuding that has engulfed Whitehall as the Transport Secretary's controversial special adviser and a senior civil servant resigned.
After a week of anonymous briefings and counter claims, Number 10 ordered Mr Stephen Byers to put an end to the turf war within his department following claims that his special adviser, Ms Jo Moore - who once said September 11th would be a good day to "bury" bad news - suggested releasing controversial rail figures on the day of Princess Margaret's funeral.
The row deepened when Downing Street identified the director of communications at the transport department, a senior civil servant, Mr Martin Sixsmith, as the culprit for briefing against Ms Moore, and ordered the head of the government's information and communications service to rebuke him. As the Conservatives insisted Mr Byers should resign, the Prime Minister's officials maintained that an e-mail - reprinted in two newspapers this week - suggesting Mr Sixsmith had rebuked Ms Moore over her proposal did not exist. Officials said it was Mr Byers who first raised the possibility of announcing the rail figures before Princess Margaret's death.
And as Ms Moore and Mr Sixsmith left their desks, Downing Street insisted Mr Sixsmith - who dismissed the whole affair as "complete nonsense" - had in fact sent an e-mail to Mr Byers warning him of the potential disaster of releasing figures on the day of a royal funeral. Earlier, the Conservative cabinet office spokesman, Mr Tim Collins, demanded Britain's Ambassador to Bucharest should explain to the foreign affairs select committee his role in the Prime Minister's decision to support a Labour donor's Romanian business deal. But the committee said it was "most unlikely" to launch an investigation into the circumstances which led Mr Blair to write to the Romanian Prime Minister supporting Mr Lakshmi Mittal's bid to take over Romania's nationalised steel company.
There was some consolation yesterday for Labour after Mr Huw Irranca-Davies won the Ogmore by-election in south Wales.