‘Wouldn’t it fit? Think about it. Someone is secretly working for you and shows a bit of skirt to the opposition. They take the bait and recruit him or her to be their secret agent – as they think. You give your agent plenty of chickenfeed to pass on, including some big stuff that you don’t mind giving away because you know they know it anyway, or will find out. You let them have it a little bit in advance and they’re delighted when they find it checks out. Adds verisimilitude, builds up your agent’s credentials so that when you want them to swallow the big lie – as happened with the Double Cross system and the 1944 Normandy invasion – they do, hook, line and sinker.’

‘But they haven’t sold us any big lies. It all checks out.’

‘That’s the point. Adjust your prism and it all falls into place. As we well know and as you pointed out, Gareth and Timber Wolf have known each other for years, with Timber Wolf perfectly well aware that Gareth was an MI6 officer under FCO cover. During all that time there was never a sniff of an intelligence relationship; Timber Wolf never volunteers a scrap of information about his EU Commission work. The Brexit referendum comes and goes and he still doesn’t. Article 50 is triggered – still nothing. Then, when negotiations start, up he pops and says to Gareth, “Dear old friend, I am pro-British and can tell you things that would help Britain to get a good deal.” Gareth takes the bait, offers him generous payments that Timber Wolf accepts without a qualm and goes on to provide intelligence at every meeting.’

‘But he never asks for anything in return, never shows any curiosity about our own tactics, never tries to find out about our thinking, which is what a normal double agent would do.’

‘Exactly. Because he’s not a normal DA. They don’t want to find out about us; they’ve no interest in laying false scents, as a normal DA might. They just want us to do something – up our offer. They let him tell us only what’s true, nothing game-changing because they don’t want the game to change. What he tells us adds flesh to what our negotiators see and hear across the table, including bits and pieces of titillating personal stuff about rows behind the scenes and so on, but never anything that alters the picture.’

‘Until now. This revelation of the EU’s real bottom line.’