Goodnight ginger prince (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images) I have a soft spot for gingers. As a left-winger, I root for the underdog. Morgan McSweeney must be relieved that the rumours that he used the “f” word to rush Foreign Office officials into vetting Peter Mandelson have been refuted this morning by Philip Barton.  Without a hint of irony, Labour’s darkest Machiavel confides to the committee: “ it has caused me a great deal of stress for a number of months, I don’t know why people do this in politics, put around false rumours. They phone lots of journalists, and those journalists then phone around politicians. That’s how rumours get around. It is very corrosive. It damages people’s reputations; a lot of people in No 10 get that, and it is unfair to staff. I am grateful to the journalists who did not cover that. ”  Whole books have been published about how McSweeney did exactly that to his political enemies.…