It’s one of the greatest cliches of politics that, when it comes to scandal, it’s the cover-up which gets people rather than the original offence. It’s become a cliche because it is so often true – as we’ve seen again this week with Rosemary Emodi.

The scandal about one of Ken Livingstone’s advisers taking a free trip to a luxury resort in Nigeria has cost her (Rosemary Emodi) her job – but the trigger for going wasn’t the original story, it was her denying she had ever made the trip – and then the BBC presenting evidence that she had.

Denying you made a trip which will have involved air flights, many people seeing you, a large gap in your diary of events in the UK and so on is a very high-risk strategy. I guess as the other investigations and allegations continue to play out we will see whether there was anything more behind this high-risk approach, or whether it was just a very foolish decision in the heat of the moment.