1. I stand by this book." Sir Christopher has already caused offence to the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, who accused him of a "betrayal of trust" after he said some unnamed ministers who stayed at his Washington residence were "pygmies" and described John Prescott as "a mastiff with his hackles up". Calls for him to resign from the PCC have already been made by MPs and the former Tory deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine.

2. Meyer‘s book, DC Confidential, serialised in the Guardian and the Daily Mail, dismissed several cabinet ministers as ‘political pygmies‘. He aimed his most scathing assault at Prescott who he described as arriving ‘at the embassy... like a mastiff with his hackles up‘. Meyer said that Prescott ‘never appeared to be sufficiently up on these foreign policy issues and he always seemed nervous‘. In a meeting with a senator Meyer was amused to see Prescott getting ‘into a terrible tangle... talking about war in the "Balklands" and "Kovosa". The senator, who knew something about military matters, was surprised to hear from the Deputy Prime Minister that British Harriers were bombing from 15ft‘. Now it seems Prescott is determined to get his own back in a letter that pulls no punches.

3. Mr MacShane urged the PCC to suspend their chairman, while Mr Prescott weighed into the controversy to suggest that Sir Christopher could no longer be "an honest broker" in complaints to the PCC about media intrusion into their private lives when he was "content to publish tittle–tattle on John Major‘s underwear". As the minister described as behaving "like a mastiff with his hackles up", Mr Prescott also highlighted the apparent gap between serialisation rights paid for Sir Christopher‘s books and PCC rules which state that the chairman "shall not be engaged or connected with, or interested in the business of publishing newspapers, periodicals or magazines". The Prescott letter, sent to the ex–envoy and copied to editors on the PCC board, reflects widespread concern in Whitehall that Sir Christopher has betrayed personal confidences after acquiring a reputation for insisting on being present at key meetings involving visiting ministers.