Geoff Hoon is Defence Secretary of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – still. It is remarkable. So convinced was I that he had to 'be resigned' after the Iraq war, I had already evicted him from my mental cabinet. He was an ex-politician, a sorry figure on the backbenches, enviously looking at the green leather seats of the front row. But then, last week, he was on my television screen. The caption showed that he was still Defence Secretary.

How could this be? Surely he had got the boot when the war in Iraq messed up so badly. While the big decisions may have been out of his hands, what with President Bush acting on direct orders from the Lord Almighty, there were enough screw-ups on the British side of things to make us believe the Hoon would go. It was a matter of when, not if.

But he is still there. It is mysterious. During the war, the Hoon was the government's front man, for which we all read as 'fall guy'. But while the war went well, nothing else did. Senior military officials rebelled against him, looters went on the rampage, soldiers kept dying, but he just sailed on through. The fall guy remained standing.

The press ruthlessly attacked him over shortages of equipment; day after day, they blamed him for everything wrong in the world. Then a widow of a soldier that had died in Iraq said the Hoon's failings had killed her husband. And still he stayed.

Clearly, the Hoon has extraordinary powers. And, if you study his behaviour under the fierce glare of the television camera, these powers start to manifest. When he speaks, words come out, but they make no sense. He sounds reasonable, but you never hear a clear statement.

If you want to know what he has actually said, you have to read it written down afterwards. If you listen to him, you come away reassured but have no memory of his words. It is like watching Derren Brown when he uses so-called neuro-linguistic programming techniques to implant ideas in people's heads. If this is the Hoon's method, his subliminal message is: "Everything is alright. Trust me. Forget everything you know."

Hoon made it through the Hutton Report, to everyone's surprise. Lord Hutton must have come under his spell. The Hoon's evasive answers to the investigating Lord should have been enough to confirm his exit. But, in the resulting report, Hutton found himself unable to strongly criticise the Hoon, the master of political survival. The subliminal messages must have worked again.

A couple of years back, the British press dubbed Tony Blair 'Teflon Tony' because no mud ever stuck to him. However, the Hoon goes one better. Any mud that someone decides to throw at him does seem to stick, but then it disappears, absorbed into his persona, strengthening him for his next battle.

How long can this last? At this rate, the rest of the cabinet will fall away, and there will no one else left but the Hoon. Last man standing. We will all gasp, convinced that he had been sacked years ago. But then he will start speaking. Suddenly the questions will cease, and everything will seem alright with the world. The man speaking will make no sense, but a feeling of trust will wash over you, even though you will not know who he is.