DEFENCE Secretary Geoff Hoon's defence of himself yesterday made fascinating watching as he muddied the waters.

Quite deliberately, he denied making Dr David Kelly's name public but at the same time he said Downing Street had approved his every move. This obviously spices up Tony Blair's appearance today because no one in the Government is prepared to tell us how Dr Kelly was identified.

Last night, Shadow defence secretary Bernard Jenkin seized on this hole in the Government's case, and said: ''The Prime Minister must cast aside the culture of spin and deceit at the heart of Government and come clean about the events and individuals responsible for the naming of Dr Kelly.

''The country demands that the Prime Minister explains who authorised the release of Dr Kelly's name and why they did so.''

All good strong stuff. But before we all storm Downing Street and take to the barricades demanding the truth, let us consider what would have happened had the Government and the Ministry of Defence refused to identify Dr Kelly.

Andrew Gilligan and the BBC had made the most serious allegation against the Government: that it had falsified the case that has cost 49 British servicemen their lives in an unnecessary war.

The Government, if it were to have any credibility, had to refute such an allegation and the obvious weakness in Mr Gilligan's report was that this claim came from a single, uncorroborated source.

And, it emerged, that source - Dr Kelly - insisted that he had not said what Mr Gilligan claimed he had.

But could Mr Hoon or Mr Blair have seriously stood before the country and said: "We deny that we lied to you. We did not tamper with the intelligence (as John Scarlett forcefully said on Tuesday). Even the BBC's mole does not stand by the BBC's report. In fact, he denies saying many of the words Mr Gilligan attributes to him - but, although we know who he is, we cannot let you know his identity in case it puts him under too much stress and he goes and does something silly."

The country would have laughed at such a flimsy piece of spin. How the media would have scoffed at such a pathetic cover-up; how it would have ridiculed the tough men at the Ministry of Defence who were scared of a little bit of stress.

Of course with hindsight, Mr Hoon, Mr Blair, Mr Gilligan, even poor Dr Kelly himself would have done things differently. With hindsight, every schoolboy historian would stop the Light Brigade charging down the wrong valley in the Crimea.

Yes, Mr Blair has plenty of questions to answer: why are British troops, including one of his own Sedgefield constituents, still dying; why are conditions for Iraqi civilians getting worse; why do charities feel so unsafe that they are withdrawing from Baghdad; why isn't the United Nations more involved?

But most of these are outside the scope of the Hutton Inquiry.