This is no 19th-century Trollope landscape but our very own 21st-century inner circle - the elite who live in one another's pockets and frame our laws, shape our cultural life, fuel our gossip. Forget the 'media village' the right sneers at: the Blunkett affair has exposed a web of interconnections linking literary lions, nannies, silks and philosophers to household media names and top politicians.

An early glimpse of the reach of this circle emerged earlier last week, when Bill Bryson admitted he had been advised to approach Kimberly Quinn in order to fast-track his daughter-in-law's application for a visa. The writer of Notes from a Small Island was somehow connected to the publisher of the Spectator. Then an irreproachably liberal woman friend sniggered: 'Oh, I should have guessed! David's dog always tried to get his snout up women's skirts!' My surprise that she knew the Home Secretary at all was elegantly shrugged off: 'Oh come on, we all know each other.'

Indeed. Which may explain why recently, in the green room of Breakfast with Frost, John Mortimer interrupted David Yelland's memory of having lunch at the Ivy with Kimberly Quinn by tapping his nose with his finger, saying: 'Yes, she was a flirt. Many a married man in London hopes Mrs Quinn won't write her autobiography.'

This elite is as at home at the Ivy as in Annie's Bar in the Commons, fighting off approaches from David Blunkett's dog at media parties and gossiping about who might be implicated as an FOK (Friend of Kimberly) as the scandal continues to unravel. This is not an aristocratic crème de la crème hermetically sealed in country seats or a clutch of high-flying politicians with No 10 in their sights. This clique crosses party lines and professional castes, packing an all the more powerful punch because of it.

A cry of 'What!' greeted the news that Geoffrey Bindman was the lawyer acting for David Blunkett. One of the country's best known civil-liberties lawyers working for the man whose agenda includes the suspension of trial by jury, detention of prisoners without trial and ID cards? Ah, but scratch the surface and you will find that a partner in Geoffrey Bindman's firm is one Katherine Gieve, wife of John. The penny drops: John Gieve is none other than David Blunkett's permanent secretary.

Playing the same game of connect the dots links another liberal luminary, Baroness Helena Kennedy, to the illiberal Home Secretary: Helena's husband, noted surgeon Dr Iain Hutchison, is cousin of Julia Hobsbawm, Kimberly Quinn's close friend and daughter of noted Marxist philosopher, Eric. Julia was also for a long-time best friend and business partner of Sarah Macaulay, now Mrs Gordon Brown. Hobsbawm Macaulay, until the two partners split acrimoniously last year, was new Labour's favourite PR firm. Its clients included the best known left-of-centre outfits (including the New Statesman ) and its fashionable parties were attended by everyone from Peter Hain and Gordon Brown to Rory Bremner and... Kimberly Quinn.

Quinn's domestic life puts her at the centre of another tangled web: second husband Stephen Quinn works for, and is a great friend of, Nicholas Coleridge, head of Condé Nast. Coleridge, in turn, is bosom pal of Charles Moore (ex-Telegraph editor and still one of its main columnists) and Ed Stourton (presenter of Today ). Another presenter of Today is John Humphrys, whom Kimberly (as she told me when she learned that John had escorted me long ago to a couple of parties) had a 'huge crush on'. (No, John didn't reciprocate, but he was invited to her wedding, along with practically all of the above, plus Boris Johnson, editor of the Spectator, and Petronella Wyatt, his lover.)

Kimberly advised Eve Pollard, former editor of the Sunday Express, where daughter Claudia Winkelman could find a nanny, because Claudia has just had a baby with Kris Thykier, who works for Matthew Freud. And Freud is married to Elizabeth Murdoch, Rupert's daughter.

These connections are clear to those in the know, but opaque to the wider world. When the inner clique reads 'friends of Stephen Quinn', they might imagine that Nicholas Coleridge is one of those talking; similarly, 'friends of Kimberly Quinn' may mean Julia Hobsbawm.

Not that this tightly woven web of professionals would allow their judgment to be clouded by personal connection to one of the players in this drama. In presenting an item on Today about the Quinns, Ed Stourton quite properly does not reveal that his friend Nicholas is Stephen Quinn's staunchest defender. Nor is Sarah Brown's falling out with Julia Hobsbawm likely to affect Gordon's relationship with Blunkett.

Many argue that the Profumo affair in the Sixties ended Britain's climate of deference forever by exposing the goings-on of aristocrats to ordinary people. The Blunkett scandal could have a similar fallout; the inner circle to which David and Kimberly and Stephen belong stands revealed as an incestuous group of networkers who, between them, carve up our world, even as their own caves in around them.

· Cristina Odone is deputy editor of the New Statesman.

Julia Hobsbawm

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1366746,00.html

Born in 1964. Father is octogenarian historian Eric. Married to Alaric Bamping, antiquarian bookseller; two teenage stepchildren and three children.

The Work
Founded PR firm Hobsbawm Macaulay with Sarah Macaulay (now Mrs Gordon Brown) in 1993. London's first professor of public relations, at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts. Last year, she formed the 'media analysis and networking business' Editorial Intelligence. She has edited a collection of essays, Where the Truth Lies: Trust and Morality in PR and Journalism, which has just been published by Atlantic Books.