"It's bloody disgusting. Half the cabinet is gay." "Then there's Robin Cook, who left his wife for his secretary."

"And did you hear that Cherie Blair bought a German oven for Downing Street instead of a British one? And apparently Tony Blair has had work done on the tennis courts at Chequers."

"My God! What a disgrace."

We live in perverse times. Politicians are fearful of being exposed for some alleged wrongdoing in their private lives while, as ministers, they exercise excessive power which goes unchecked. So Tony Blair could place unworkable and counterproductive anti-terrorist legislation on the statute books after only two days of parliamentary scrutiny last September. But his press secretary, Alastair Campbell, spends weeks justifying the government's attitude towards Ron Davies and Nick Brown. I also attended a lobby briefing last year where Campbell did indeed spend 40 minutes explaining why the Blairs had purchased a hob oven which included parts from Germany.

All around us there is shock and horror at the behaviour of those wretched politicians. But this shock and horror is confined largely to the media. No one else seems to give a damn. The opening exchanges are therefore entirely imaginary. No one other than a few conspiracy-minded journalists would utter them.

Sex and the hob oven are all part of an irrelevant form of accountability imposed on politicians by the media. It is based on an assumption that politicians are all up to no good and these revelations somehow prove it. Although the Blairs inherited a kitchen which was probably capable of doing little more than produce the odd bowl of Heinz tomato soup for John Major, they had to think twice before improving it. Similarly, Nick Brown has been in more agonies over whether to "come out" than he has about the lifting of the beef ban. No doubt Cecil Parkinson suffered more anguish over the exposure of his affair with Sara Keays than he did over his support for the poll tax which Margaret Thatcher placed on the statute book with breathtaking ease.

There are signs that this daft imbalance of untrammelled legislative power combined with excessive intolerance of what politicians get up to privately is drawing to a close. Newspapers continue to throw stones in the pond, but make few ripples. Will people rush to buy Paul Routledge's biography of Peter Mandelson now that his latest "outing" has been received with indifference, even in Hartlepool? Will the Sunday Times sell more copies when it serialises the book written by Robin Cook's former wife? Most people seem to be bored already by Cook's sex life, if they were ever excited by it in the first place.

Perhaps politicians will be able to relax a little about their private lives. Good. Because their professional lives are about to be tested in ways they are not used to. The separate rows this week over who should represent Labour in Wales and in London remind us that this government of supposed control freaks has made life more difficult for itself quite deliberately. Indeed, it has redrawn the map of Britain to such an extent that, at the height of its power and popularity, new Labour could find Ken Livingstone as mayor of London, Rhodri Morgan in charge of Wales and the SNP running Scotland.

That would be an extreme outcome. In Scotland the SNP tide may be turning already, while in Wales and London the party machine is working overtime to ensure candidates are selected to the liking of the national leadership. Inevitably this manoeuvring is reviving allegations of control freakery, but why shouldn't the national leadership have a say in the candidates for devolved bodies? In the 1980s Labour was often pilloried for allowing local parties to select unsuitable candidates in by-elections. John Major, too, was accused of weak leadership when he failed to prevent Neil Hamilton standing in Tatton.

At a time when, in some areas, candour has been unnecessarily forced upon ministers, Downing Street or the Millbank machine should be more open about their string-pulling from behind the scenes. Blair decided months ago that Livingstone would be prevented from standing in London. The moment Ron Davies resigned as a candidate in Wales, Alun Michael was the national leadership's favoured candidate. At some point someone close to the centre - perhaps the Great Enforcer - needs to make the distinction publicly between devolution of power and the right of the national party leadership to have some say in the selection of candidates. Misleading waffle about ensuring machinery is in place to help lesser-known candidates only reinforces prejudice against the leadership. Anyway I can assure those purists who resent interference that the party machine will make some cock-ups, just as it did over the NEC elections. So far, the record of the Blairites in internal elections has been surprisingly poor.

All this is secondary to the wider theme. Nobody can control the voters; ultimately they will decide who exercises the new devolved powers. Donald Dewar may find he has given up his cabinet post to become leader of the opposition in Scotland. Lord Archer, rather than whoever is the Labour candidate, could become, God help us, the mayor of London.

Occasionally the elision of unrelated events strikes an optimistic note. The new pockets of power will challenge the over- mighty ministers who have created them. Rightly so.

But ministers will at least be allowed to decide in the future who they want to go to bed with. As in America, the last surreal fortnight has left Britain more balanced than it was before. The voters have decided that Clinton's knob is as irrelevant as Cherie's hob.

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