"The Fuhrer didn't know." I remember a senior Tory using the phrase on a previous occasion when Gordon Brown (or was it Tony Blair?) was denying anything to do with some act of skulduggery performed by an underling, and I'm sure someone has been saying it again today.
It isn't about comparing anyone to Hitler. It's just a way of making the point that, when leaders deny responsibility for the actions of their subordinates, it's never very convincing.
Downing Street has said Brown didn't know anything about the smear emails, and at Westminster the Tories and others seem to accept this.
But today, the Tories are trying to persuade people that Brown was responsible because he hired McBride in the first place and allowed him to operate as an attack dog.
Francis Maude, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, has been making this argument in interviews on Sky and the World at One.
If you hire attack dogs, it's no good expressing surprise when you find they have been going round biting people. It's what attack dogs do. You should not have them. That's not what politics is about.
When I asked the prime minister's spokesman this morning whether Brown felt responsible for creating a culture around him in which this kind of smearing took place, I was told it was Brown's "strong view" that there was no place in politics of activity of this kind.
The prime minister, the spokesman said, was "entirely focused" on his work making Britain a better place.
But this afternoon in the Evening Standard, Stephen Byers has given the Tories more ammunition by declaring that he was the victim of "aggressive and hostile" media briefing by McBride.
So how much is Brown to blame? What do you think?
