Memories may be beautiful and yet,
What’s too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget.

To rise to one of the greatest offices of state takes hard work and hard headedness. It involves hard choices and you have to be a hard taskmaster. A grasp of your brief is essential as is, no doubt, a prodigious intellect.

Which is what makes the high profile memory lapses on the part of our leaders all the more worrying.

Take David Blunkett who, his biographer said, can “recall trivial conversations from 20 years ago with constituents about refuse collections” and yet could not remember the details of his affair with a married woman when submitting evidence to the enquiry into his wrong-doing that led to his (short-lived) disgrace.

Or what about Jack Straw? During the Hinduja passport affair which led to the (short-lived) disgrace of Peter Mandelson, Straw had written the words “Zola Budd” on a note to his private secretary when asked about a passport application by Prakash Hinduja. Straw later said he “could not recall” why the name of the South African long distance runner, who had had a passport rushed through enabling her to run for the British Olymnpic team, had occured to him.

And now we have Stephen Byers:

The Guardian: Byers admits he misled MPs about Railtrack

Mr Byers acknowledged in the high court in London that when he told a Commons select committee that he was “not aware” of discussions over a change to the status of Railtrack before July 25 2001 it was “not an accurate statement”.

Asked by Keith Rowley QC, who is acting for Railtrack’s private shareholders, if he had deliberately made an inaccurate statement Mr Byers replied: “It was such a long time ago, I cannot remember, but it is not a truthful statement and I apologise for that. I cannot remember the motives behind it.”

“I cannot remember the motives behind it”. There’s a pattern forming here. I think there might be a previously undiscovered contagious form of senility doing the rounds at the highest levels of the Government. It’s a terrible thought but what other possible explanation could there be? The alternatives are either incompetence or mendacity which can be dismissed out of hand - no minister could return to office in such circumstances.

And what else have ministers done and forgotten about? We could be, at this very minute, be at war with Iran and it’s slipped the Cabinet’s minds. They’re going to have to start tattoing themselves like Leonard Shelby in Memento.

It’s clearly a sporadic condition however. Charles Clarke, for instance, would seem never to forget lunch.