Oh Whitehall. If it’s not scandal you provide, it’s sheer silliness. If you saw last week’s NewsJack (required reading for all who want to keep abreast of news big and small, naturally) you will know that Defense Secretary Liam Fox was roundly castigated for bringing his friend Adam Werrity on diplomatic trips abroad and letting him run a charity from Ministry of Defence offices. Clearly suffering from a guilty conscience (or perhaps smarting from thinly-veiled allegations of bumsex) Fox resigned this weekend.

In yet another episode of ineptitude, Oliver Letwin, a minister in the Cabinet Office, has been admitted to dumping documents in the bins of a park near Downing Street where he worked early in the morning. Although he insists that none of it was classified material, the Daily Mirror asserts that among them were documents referring to subjects as diverse as national security, terrorism, and the personal details of his constituents in West Dorset.

It is interesting that certain members of the coalition government are seemingly bent on characterising the front benches as hapless and lovably bumbling, as opposed to the professionalism that we might expect of the most highly-placed political figures in Britain. "We’re not supposed to let our friends to hang out in the MoD and take them on jaunts to Washington and Dubai without proper security vetting? Shucks, why didn’t anyone tell me? It’s a bad idea to dispose of sensitive government documents in the bin of a public park? Gee, that’s surprising – can you explain why again?'

It’s a sad fact that the political celebrities of our society are those prone to the gaffe and the blunder; indiscretions abound and missteps are always afoot. Galloway, Johnson, Opik, the list goes on, and on, and on, across all political divisions and encompassing all manner of low-level idiocy.

Maybe it’s endearing, and maybe it’s just frustrating, but you certainly can’t deny that it’s a trend we’ve seen for a long time. From Yes Minister to The Thick of It, we probably can’t imagine the movers and shakers of Britain’s political establishment being slick operators in shades and sharply-tailored suits. They’re much more familiar as characters prepared to chase confidence tricksters down the street in their pyjamas and dressing gown and claiming publicly that they would rather go hungry than send their children to a comprehensive (in both cases, Oliver Letwin again).