© Matthew Buck Hack Cartoons

The government’s chief whip Andrew Mitchell (the PM’s midfield enforcer) has sworn at several policemen and called them something far too class conscious for a representative of  a ‘Posh’ government full of wealthy former public schoolboys.

It is unclear at the time of writing whether the PM will be able to pull Mr Mitchell back from his position well over the line of public acceptability as John Terry (just retired from international football) famously did at this summer’s Euro 2012 championships.

All such modern media problems are compromised by the politics of the newspapers in the run-up to publication of Lord Justice Leveson’s report. The paper leading the charge on Mitchell and the police is The Sun and their relations with the Police have already been the subject of much conversational and legal scrutiny.

Mitchell’s careless and contemptuous clanger is a terrible goal for the government to concede and there might well still be a sending off which the increasingly knocked-about PM can ill-afford.