The issues could hardly be more central, or crucial, to the role of government: crime and the currency.
Ahead of Home Office figures expected to show a sharp rise in violent crime, chief constables were due in Downing Street for a summit with the Prime Minister. Monday morning also saw the leak of a memorandum from the heart of the Department of Trade and Industry, warning of possible "meltdown" in Britain's manufacturing heartlands unless the cabinet commits to membership of the euro.
Not hard, then, to imagine Mr Blair's anger at finding so much of the media preoccupied instead with Ken Follett's withering assault on the premier's morality and manliness.
"Who cares about Ken Follett?" he might have demanded of Alistair Campbell - dumped in the dock alongside Peter Mandelson, the Secretary of State cruelly cast as more Lady Macbeth than Prince of Darkness.
Who indeed among the voters "out there" - from Sedgefield to Sheffield - knows or cares about a couple of ex-Labour luvvies, or the social and political disappointments some fancy fire their fury with No 10?
The point, of course, is that No 10 cared. For the millionaire novelist is (or was) one of their own. He is credited with raising millions for the New Labour project, his wife persuading Labour MPs out of their donkey jackets into well-cut suits.
Moreover, Mr Follett was continuing a tone set by Rory Bremner, and painfully evidenced by the members of the Women's Institute.
Control freaks don't like mockery at the best of times. But one foreign observer of politics here sharply divined that Bremner's real offence was the ready resonance his characterisation of Mr Blair (as hapless creature of his official spokesman) found with the watching public. Mr Follett's attack on the spin-doctors, and those who employ their services, found an equally ready resonance with Labour MPs.
Journalists are always fascinated with the "who's on their way up, who's on their way down?" side of politics. No less so are the politicians themselves. Prime ministers and their aides have always found ways to signal favour and disfavour. Hence the feeling of some commentators that Mr Campbell's response to Mr Follett's "rant" was somewhat over-the-top.
No less extraordinary than the assertion that no one connected with the government would ever brief against people in it was the spectacle of the particular ministers brought on to deny it had ever happened to them.
Mrs Margaret Beckett is clearly back in fashion. However, some will remember the rumours that she would be forced out of the DTI to make way for Mr Mandelson, and how they just happened to prove correct. Dr Mowlam now says it's all rubbish, yet barely a week ago she thought somebody (she didn't think it was Mr Blair) was out to do her down.
Mr Follett mentioned the case of David Clark, one-time Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, whose departure was long foretold in unattributable briefings. And Frank Field - who was appointed to "think the unthinkable" about welfare, before Mr Blair did the unthinkable and sacked him - is threatening to publish his own account unless the spin doctors back off.
Clare Short once famously referred to those who lived in the dark. From the same body of apparatchiks we have come to know the depth of the antagonism between Gordon and Robin; the measure of Gordon's bitterness over Peter's decision to back Tony; the even greater extent of Gordon's determination to succeed Tony; and that somebody close to the prime minister once described the Chancellor as psychologically flawed.
Old hat? Try the more recent manifestations of the same tendency. As the newspapers feasted on Mr Follett's outburst, the Mail on Sunday informed us that Peter recently told friends Gordon was "neuralgic" on the question of the euro. This was presumed in response to the earlier description of Mr Mandelson as pea-brained by an unnamed Treasury source, presumably for questioning the wisdom of the Chancellor's (seemingly doomed) strategy to postpone all discussion of the issue until after the general election.
Doubtless some of it can be made up, or exaggerated - the whispered words of some young aide translated into a "senior government source".
But we can only know the depth of these personal antagonisms because the principals or their "friends" have spoken of them. And inevitably they provide the sub-plot when the personal gives way to the political.
There were no conspicuous denials of those well-placed reports that Mr Mandelson, Mr Cook and Mr Byers were pushing Mr Blair to give an assessment of Britain's readiness to join the euro before polling day. Nor could even the brilliant Mr Campbell credibly suggest that "spin-journalists" were to blame for two leaks, on two consecutive days, of memos designed to advance the pro-euro argument.
Headlines suggesting that Mr Blair's attempted "fight-back" has been stopped in its tracks must be the more galling for the Prime Minister, given that the polls show the Tories still stuck around 33 per cent and Labour on course for a second term with a big majority. But when some within his government seem determined to advance crucial policy debates by way of leaks, he can hardly be surprised that journalists follow the spin.
Ken Follett may have overplayed his hand in holding Mr Blair responsible for the tittle-tattle. But on the big picture of Europe: if Mr Blair really wants to hold the present line, he surely has the power to order his ministers back behind it.
