Credit where credit is due, the official Conservative Party reaction to the Ray Lewis affair appears to be rather more measured and sensible than that of some of the party’s online cheerleaders:

Former minister Francis Maude will chair talks with senior party officials and one of Boris Johnson’s right hand men to learn lessons from the resignation of the deputy mayor …

Team Boris’s takeover of City Hall was seen as a test bed for Mr Cameron’s first 100 days in Government, with vital lessons to be learned. Mr Boles was seconded to manage the launch and report back.

The Ray Lewis affair is seen as having exposed poor preparations. According to MPs and party officials, the main errors include omitting to check Ray Lewis’s background thoroughly, failing to anticipate intense media scrutiny, and terrible handling of media allegations, in particular putting Mr Lewis in front of the cameras where he ended up talking himself into deeper trouble.

In other words, ‘yes, we made mistakes’ rather than ‘it’s all a leftie plot / smear operation / load of nonesense / fault of someone else’ [delete as appropriate].