Michael Gove wants to add me to his professional network

The publication of private emails by Colin Powell has spread panic in Washington. Now nobody feels safe. Some prominent people have even deleted their entire email accounts, fearing that their private messages will be hacked and revealed to the world. It hasn’t been the leaking of official secrets of the kind associated with WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden that has caused the present alarm; it has been the exposure of the ordinary gossip on which Washington thrives.

Powell, a former secretary of state, always seemed a cautious, buttoned-up kind of public servant, but he turns out to be just as uninhibited as anyone else, calling Donald Trump a ‘national disgrace’, Hillary Clinton ‘greedy’, and Dick Cheney an ‘idiot’. These are not national secrets, nor even original opinions; but they are embarrassing judgments to have publicly attached to you if you are a leading member of the Washington establishment. If you were lower down the greasy pole, they could be still more damaging; they could even threaten your career prospects.