A former politician loses his job following an indiscretion with a woman much younger than himself. Put that way, Lord Triesman's resignation as chairman of the Football Association looks like just another story about a romantic old fool, with the chronic incompetence of the FA thrown in for good measure.
But it would be a gross injustice if that lazy spin, wielded by several irate sports columnists last week, was accepted as the reality of the situation. For the Mail on Sunday's exposé, in which Triesman was secretly recorded during a private meal, amounted to nothing less than a serious assault on civil liberty.
In recent years, we've heard a lot about the "surveillance state", not least in the Mail on Sunday and its sister paper, the Daily Mail. Both papers have run countless stories about "Big Brother" and government "snooping" relating to the powers of the police and local authorities. But imagine the uproar if the government or police bugged a private citizen without any cause for suspicion of wrongdoing. And it's to be rightly hoped and expected that much of the outcry would come from the Mail newspapers.
There are people who spend an awful lot of time worrying about images on CCTV cameras that are never going to be seen by anyone or DNA samples that have only ever been used to prosecute the guilty. These may be worthy causes for concern, but surely the issue of civil liberty isn't simply a matter of state contraventions. It must also concern corporate or media violations of a private citizen's right to speak privately in private. And if it doesn't, then what does it say about our commitment to the basic human right of privacy?
Consider the facts of the story. Melissa Jacobs, an aide to Triesman when he was a government minister, claims that she and her former boss had once been "intimate" but that she had ended the relationship. Whatever the case, they remained on friendly enough terms to have lunch together in a restaurant.
And they were certainly on friendly enough terms for Triesman not to suspect that Jacobs was wearing a wire. After all, he wasn't a gangland criminal or a drug dealer. So he didn't think to subject Jacobs to a careful search for recording devices.
That was his first mistake. The second was to mention, when asked about his work, the sort of interesting detail that friends share in the knowledge that the confidence won't be breached. This was the long and short of his incaution: "There's some evidence that the Spanish authorities are trying to identify the referees… and pay them."
For voicing that brief, speculative tidbit to a trusted companion, Triesman's career and reputation were ruined and England's bid to stage the 2018 Word Cup, which he was heading, was plunged into jeopardy. Because, as we now know, Jacobs was recording the conversation which she then sold to the Mail on Sunday for a figure thought to be in excess of £75,000.
Triesman was duly branded "weak", "naive" and an "idiot". Exit in shame. Case closed. But let's take a moment to contemplate the implications here. Can any public figure ever again speak in confidence to a friend? Or, indeed, a spouse or any family member? Is there any space at all in British public life for privacy?
Taken to its logical conclusion, the Triesman affair suggests that anyone who occupies a high-profile job should assume that all their conversations are being bugged unless proved otherwise. And if your every utterance, regardless of the privacy of the setting, is potentially subject to external scrutiny, you are living if not in a surveillance state, then in a state of surveillance.
The standard newspaper justification in these circumstance is "in the public interest". Sometimes – in the case of political corruption, say, or egregious moral hypocrisy – this is an entirely legitimate argument, and therefore the ability to investigate powerful individuals is a vital press freedom that demands staunch defence. Very often, however, for public interest you can read "what interests the public".
Such was the case with Max Mosley. It would be hard to maintain with a straight face that it was a matter of public interest to know what kind of S&M games the former president of the FIA got up to in the seclusion of a Chelsea basement, though credit to the News of the World, that's precisely what it tried to do. But equally, once the story was revealed, it would have been disingenuous to claim that there was not enormous interest from the public.
That may well point to a prurience that's endemic in British culture, yet one of the intriguing aspects of the Triesman case is that it fails the test for both "public interest" and "what the public finds interesting". If the interested public was asked whether it was worth the risk of losing the World Cup bid so as to know that an FA official had shared a confidence with a friend, it's likely – judging by online responses – that the answer would be no. Not only was the story unprincipled, then, it could not even claim to be popular.
None the less, it's also true that, by and large, both the public and the media remain untroubled by Triesman's demise. And that's troubling. Not because Triesman was a brilliant administrator, but because the nature of his downfall marks a further erosion in the essential division between the public and private realms.
In an age of celebrity voyeurism, reality TV and social networking websites, we have grown used to learning the intimate particulars of other people's lives. As a result, the very notion of privacy has diminished. Access to the interior world of public figures is too often seen as a public right, in which privacy is held to be tantamount to secrecy. To invade the former is thus presented as a necessary exposé of the latter.
But it is not. Triesman has described the Mail on Sunday's operation as entrapment. It was, but that understates the case. Exposing an illegal arms dealer by posing as a terrorist is entrapment. What Triesman suffered was a fishing expedition, in which Jacobs was the trawlerman, the ubiquitous Max Clifford the dockside salesman and the Mail on Sunday the wholesaler. And it isn't the fish that stinks.
The one person to emerge from this episode with a more fragrant reputation is Gary Lineker, who resigned from his Mail on Sunday column in protest. It's easier to stand on principle when you're sitting on a large pile of money, but Lineker's action should not be underestimated.
It's an example of what is required if we are to reclaim a healthy sense of privacy. Lineker is a marquee name who was writing for a fine sports section. His absence will be felt. And ultimately it's only by registering what's unacceptable that attitudes and behaviour change.
The public, too, has a role to play here and not just the friends – if she has any – of Jacobs. When it comes to "public interest", this is a moment to say: "Not in my name." In the defence civil liberties, there are plenty of worse places to start.