THE POLITICAL WING

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All the grubby stuff going on in, and coming out of, the very big House in Westminster

'Mr Blair believes Mr Brown may find an excuse to 'duck out' of the Election - which must take place by next June - possibly on health grounds' (MoS)

A post-mortem without a body. Before the emergence at last of long-standing rumours about the Prime Minister's health problems, nby was a niche site attracting between 300 and 600 hits a day - depending on the attraction of the main news item. At one point on September 7th that total climbed to 5,038. By the middle of the first week of viral spread, over 30,000 sites were discussing the issue of half-blind depressives and how fit or not they might be for high office. Yesterday we were back at 384 of the nby faithful. Given that getting facts wrong about a public person's state of mind is technically a breach of the peace, it's not hard to understand why the story died. New Number Ten press office head Simon Lewis has faced perhaps his first out-of-the-blue test, and come out the other end without the necessity of even an on-the-record denial.

 Inside Westminster's seedy suburb, the gossip about moods, tantrums, anti-depressants and further sight problems has been around since (as I pointed out on breaking the story) 2006 at least. Lewis must have been aware of them. But given the strength of the law in this area, it seems unlikely he was ever that worried: he had Meghrari, Afghanistan and the TUC on his radar. A story hard to prove, easy to deny and even harder to print was hardly the stuff of which nightmares are made.

 All that therefore makes the epilogue to this mini-storm very interesting. For no sooner had the dust settled a tad than Downing Street was back onto me: the senior source couldn't find my coverage of our conversation - why? (Because I'd taken it down as old news.) The 'dodgy denial' was rather unnecessary wasn't it? (Given it was ludicrously off-the-record, and flatly contradicted widespread medical opinion, two witnesses to a senior conversation and three corroborations……not really).

To seasoned Westminster addicts, this reflected nothing more than prima facia evidence of the start of a post-mortem inside Number Ten. Being softwood  rather than seasoned, it took advice from a kindly professional to point this out to me. But continuing the wood analogy, those who spend their lives in the dark woods sometimes fail to see the sunlight grabbed by a new sapling. My naif's observation is this: if there's no body, why bother with a post-mortem? Why on Earth waste one's valuable time on a story which - we are told - has been invented by some old nutter scribbling a website regularly attracting 0.00003% of the UK population?

 The answers are perhaps twofold. First - if I may adopt management Birtism for a second - 'to ensure best practice next time'. I've no problem with that; I just wouldn't have thought national stories created by nutters were that likely to have a next time. Or second, because a potential armed torpedo heading for a beleaguered ship had been diverted; and - as another sub might fire again - the Number Ten press office should learn how to manoeuvre more successfully in future.

 Well, you pays your money and you takes your choice. All I can say is that senior mandarins do occasionally get too liquid and say things they shouldn't. But if they don't know the specific medical significance of what they're saying, then I (who do understand it) am in a unique position to allege 'the chances are this is not a plant, or a smear' and publish with a clear conscience.

 A senior editor told me last Thursday, "I have no doubt you're onto something, no doubt at all. I'm not sure you have the whole picture but what you do have is a story about an area of Brown's problems where the press office is very nervous indeed". I think that's a wise and fair summary.

In a broader sense, the Brownmadandblind saga has lessons to teach us all. Not least of these is the immediate instinct of the media to make the story just that: Brownmadandblind.

For those who don't know already, I should explain that the reason I'm so confident on the proscribed foods central to this story is that I am reactive depressive myself. Twenty years ago I was given MAOIs: not only do I know how dangerous they are, I know that the only reason to use them in 2009 would be (as a prescribing psychiatrist said to me three weeks ago) 'a doctor with a patient he knew to be suicidal'. I know only too well the bigoted response to mental health problems in this country. Brown is not mad and blind: but I think it very possible he is severely depressed - a condition not being helped by his awareness of an accelerating drift towards blindness.

 Another thing that surprised me was just how many friends - well-connected or not - who, once the story's profile rose, moved to warn me mysteriously about 'consequences' and 'backing off' and 'not pushing my luck', often accompanied by dire warnings about 'these are desperate people' and so forth. I think they were exaggerating, but what do I know? Surely the point to take from this is the assumption by experienced, erudite and calm people that - if faced with an intransigent foe - the Establishment will stop at nothing. Perhaps ‘twas ever thus: but somehow, I doubt this is a case of plus ça change: civil servants did not wind up dead after rubbishing US security dossiers in Macmillan's time. (When I originally posted the story of Brown's alleged SSRI usage in 2006, a senior MP friend rang me to say "Very good John, now shut up and enjoy your golden years")

 Finally, the degree of well-informed professionalism and casual cynicism among lobby correspondents was - even for an old owl like me - a genuine jolt to the system. While a great many tabloid hacks are good for little more than yelling through celeb letter-boxes and printing lies, in the Commons lobby room a more serious air pertains. They know the law; they know how a mistake can screw their careers. But equally, a gratuitous (almost unconscious) acceptance that all is smoke, mirrors, greasy poles, managed plants, hypocrisy and misused power remains ever-present.

 And me? I'd be a liar if I didn't admit to having enjoyed the roller-coaster. But I'm able to remain apart from the kick, bollock and scramble because I'm not out to 'get' Brown or 'get' the exclusive or 'get' rich by selling one big smoking gun. I'm lucky in that while most of the folks I've met or exchanged communications with since September 4th are doing this for a living, I'm doing it to enrich the autumn of my life - and put one or two additional straws on the back of our rotten constitutional and political system.

 In hoping for the breakage of that system, the last thing I want is an end to democratic libertarianism. Rather, like many millions of others, I want more creative aspirations from better people in 'the system' - and more responsibility given back to those living under it.

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Open season on the One-Eyed Trouser Snake. The Downing Street machine having declared unser geliebter Fuhrer entirely sane and free from pills of a mind-changing nature, logically we can now return to blaming him for everything with an entirely clear conscience.

What a relief this is. No longer will we need to couch our criticism in terms of 'poor dear' and so forth. He is Culpability Brown, and so unlike the fox, he shall enjoy no protection: aux barricades!

Every Person for Herhimself. Gordondammerung is in full swing now. Whether or not the Three-quarters blind half mad story finally sticks, the Great One's behaviour increasingly speaks for itself. Having promoted Kirsty McSpart to the top job as his window on the World, he has managed with but one stone in his sling to break half the noses in Whitehall's trough.

Lady Fondlebum was described as 'dismayed' by the Mail yesterday (13.9.09); a Whitehall source with whom I spoke was a tad more florid about his state. Several staffers inside the Bunker are now close to resignation (confirmed by Guido Fawkes http://order-order.com/) - the secretary-throwing was bad enough, but now the Trouser Snake has turned to Die Sturmerine, there is a sense that the last ounce of sanity has dematerialised.

This may be the straw that breaks the Caledonian's back. Over the weekend, the Minister for Pussycats flatly contradicted Brown's 'coming out of recession' bollocks with a more 'W' shaped version of what the future holds. Miliband Senior meanwhile is on the ceiling about being handed top marks for fucking up the recent Mideast rescue attempt, Man O'Straw is getting fed up of having to change his story every three hours, the SNP lads have vowed eternal vengeance following the Meghrari blamestorming session - and perhaps most emphatically of all, Salvador Darling has come out the other side of his surreal period and begun to paint a different picture of what needs to be done. There was (I can exclusively reveal) a furious session ten days back when the Man Saving the World met The Man Saving Himself. Ally made it brutally clear that the cuts will stand, and they will be called cuts.

There's a pr somewhere working furiously on behalf of Darling - and Ed Miliband's tout-rate has been rising steadily, now his brother is a busted flush (See nbys passim). Several in the Labour Loop are wondering if Mr Alistair Soup might be in some way involved in all this.....certainly, he's been too busy to answer my email these last three days.

Tittle-tattle aside, quite a lot of the evidence is firm corroboration that this time, Disgruntled of Backbench may get the tentative hand of friendship from those Bigger Beasties leaving Gordon to himself in the isolation ward. A senior FO source insists that the rainbow cabal is planning a Labour Conference of all time. Could be fun.

A growing list of those against Bercow. One man putting himself up for Parliament (at his own expense) is Independent candidate Patrick Phillips in the ghastly Bercow's constituency. Sadly, all the publicity has gone to the equally ghastly Nigel Fartage of the UKIP.

The UKIP, you will recall, was even too mad, corrupt and strife-riven for Robert Kilroy-Silk to stomach, but is nevertheless (thanks to the ineptitude of the Caledonian Cracked One) running a close second to Labour in consituencies where the Tories have traditionally held sway. And indeed, in 2005 Berk-O won a stonking 57.4% of the votes....while UKIP got just the 3%.

Whatever happens, Buckingham isn't going to get a liberally-inclined MP as a result of the forthcoming by-election (I would doubt very much if it has ever had one). But lots of Tories about to have no MP at all would hate to have Nigel Garage in the role....and disgruntled liberalish voters (about 38% of the electors) would almost certainly rather have an anti-Establishment Independent in the Commons than a member of what the Cameroon calls 'BNP lite'.

I asked Mr Phillips what his broad politics were, and he very kindly supplied nby with this succinct summary:

'I am deeply Eurosceptic and whilst not in any way in UKIP's clutches would rather we were not in Europe. Like many, many others I voted happily in 1976 for the UK to join the Common Market - but not be legislated by Brussels. Also I have my concerns on immigration - not on racial grounds but the pure numbers involved - and the pork pies the Government has peddled about it.'

As it happens, this is not only a near-perfect reflection of what I feel myself, it is what huge swathes of 40+ middle England think to be sound sense and realistic....given the small size and wretched economic outlook of our country. I must observe too that being pro-Europe and anti-Brussels is an attitude felt by the majority everywhere in (real) Western Europe - and I have heard Irish, German, Dutch, French and Greeks express the exact same opinion.

The EU cabal in Brussels represents a peek into the future for those folks awake enough to see what's coming should we allow the power-clowns to continue pumping up their own egos with money from our pockets. French and Dutch oppose the constitution? Ignore them. Irish don't want it? Bully them. What we don't want to do is replace one set of clowns for another.

All this points to a vote for Patrick Phillips. Which would be a good thing in itself, given we do need more independents in the Commons, poking and pricking at the engorged egos therein.

Mr Phillips has promised to send us his full manifesto when it's ready. At that time, we'll share it with you....as well as our opinion.

Others have a different approach on how to get ahead in the Power Game....See Jack the Hat Harman

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Mishandled by Handlebum. So then, Vauxhall does a deal with the people Mandy didn't want - as a result of which Germany gets a long-term plant commitment, and we get four years of vaguely promised nothingness.

As we predicted at the start of this tableau, Lord Meddlesome has floated and fluffed about to absolutely zero effect. See Mandy go very quiet. Perhaps this is merely 'the perception of wrong-horse backing'.

Frantic lobby correspondents in feeding frenzy. Last night (10.9.09) the Commons lobby correspendents' room was still going bonkers following Matthew Norman's piece in The Independent of that morning. Retelling the news broken by nby last Friday (but without giving us any credit) Norman was seen to have led the charge of Brown's alleged MAOI usage from underground gossip to national splash.

At the time of going to press, The Sun and The Mail were rumoured to be on the verge of running the story....but the Princess of Darkness had once again taken the reins of news management. As usual, the hacks quaked in expectation of what sort of denial (if any) Lord Fondlebum might issue.

Rats, sinking ships, etc etc. One by one, the Trouser Snake's allies are falling back from positions Right Behind hin to new ones a very long way away from him behind the lines. Two in two days (Darling No 1 and Man O'Straw No 2) has now become three in three days as Ed Balls says 'none of us' wanted Megrahi released. It's only four days since Brown admitted he 'sympathised' with the compassionate grounds for release.

I am at last feeling reasonably confident that Brown's days are not so much numbered as few in number.

Today at the Dark Lochnagar website:

'Whilst we wouldn't want Broonie to be carried from office by men in white coats, is it not time someone spoke to him quietly and got him FUCKING SECTIONED FOR THE GOOD OF THE COUNTRY?'

Not sure I'd be that harsh, but there you are: the story keeps rolling on. From 2,710 sites discussing it last Friday, the number climbed to 18,980 Monday afternoon. Quite like this ad pastiche though - from the Tartan Army site:

The odd world of Jack Mano-Straw. Where there was once an aggressive and principled UK Students' Union leader in 1969, there is today - forty years on with a fart like thunder - a hunched, clipped, grey-haired old hack call Jack Sraw.

People go on about Brown, but the sheer mind-altering nature of Jack the very dull and pompous Lad is....mind-boggling. "We won't release Biggs, he'll die in jail....that is, we might release him on compassionate grounds....but we probably won't because he's shown no remorse but I tell you what, let's release him on compassionate grounds. We won't release Meghrahi because he committed a heinous crime, and if we do but anyway that's a hypothetocal oh alright then, maybe we will....on compassionate grounds oh look, the Scots have released him but that's nothing to do with me and any talk of us being involved in the process is wholly and well, not entirely true - more sort of very slightly accurate but let's be clear about this there was no deal here involving that is to say there might have been but the reason I'm able to tell you this is because it's quite untrue but I tell you what, actually we all connived in it and, um, there you have it. Until I change my mind again."

"I'm Jack Straw" shouts one of these many statements. "No, I'm Jack Straw" shouts another. "We're all fucking Jack Straw" they yell in unison.

Search me. I'm baffled. Either the bloke's mad, or unutterably bored. He never struck me as mad, although he did used to wear Edna Everidge glasses in the Sixties. Nah....I think he's bored out of his brain. Watch him during PMQs: he can't even be bothered to nod and go 'hear-hear' any more. He sits there writing something. I wonder what it is? Here's a possibility I came up with earlier:

"God, not more of this 500,000 raised out of jobs and twelve million helped to lose their homes drivel. Look at him: he must have the fattest arse in Britain. And I should know, I've been up it long enough. Twelve-ten....is that the time? I thought it was much later. I wonder whatever happened to Dany Cohn-Bendit? And Tariq Ali. Maurice went into advertising, sold out and became a Tory....now the cheeky bugger's working for us. Some people, eh? If they think we're bad, just look at that mob over there. I wonder if Osborne shaves yet? Don't know any of the others by name. Politicians now are so grey."

brown health investigation update

Gordo and the G-string. Officials admit that almost $200 billion (£123 billion) pledged in credit facilities for the International Monetary Fund has yet to materialise. Most embarrassingly, the shortfall includes $75 billion due from the European Union.

When I was a lad, the Beano comic had a strip in it called The Bash Street Kids, about harmless infant delinquents in a 1950s school. One of the characters was a twit called Smiffy. In every episode, an arrow would point at this unfortunate, with the words 'Smiffy always does things wrong'. So at the school baths, other kids would go 'glub glub', but Smiffy would say 'bulg bulg'. Trust me, you had to be there: it was funny.

Gordon is exactly like Smiffy, but what's not funny is the mounting evidence of GB's allegedly parlous medical state (You read it here first - see above) one side-effect of which (according to a senior phychiatrist with whom I spoke last Friday) is 'the sufferer tends to display a very poor level of insight'.

Every time there is a G thing (it seems we're up to 20 now) Gordo the Great says we must all pull together, lob in the cash and not go our separate ways. The others all grin politely - and then row in the opposite direction while um, forgetting to stump up the lolly, as such, and, ahh, going away separately to do very different things.

What started as a joke is now a farce being mc'd by a man who may well be dangerously ill. Our two main EU partners France and Germany have coughed up a minute fraction of what Salvador Darling did to 'rescue' our economy (especially France, which hasn't had a single bank failure since the fiasco started) and they now seem to be coming out of recession more quickly....although personally, I'm not convinced.

Either way, we're a basket case. To be honest, I'm sure (oh alright then, I know) Darling understands this as well as his not entirely good friend Merv the Perv. Salvador will - if it's the last thing he does - distance himself from his deluded employer; he just isn't going about it the best way. All this 'upbeat' nonsense is going to rebound on him very badly when things falter later this year, or perhaps in January 2010.

By the way, side-effects of Big G's medication include blurred vision - not something he can afford - and an inability to, you know....do the other thing. I doubt if Sarah will notice.

wing special: bullies & cowards

Number Ten's silo management culture. So long as the current approach to press queries reigns at No 10 Downing Street, you can forget any help from the Government about ISP/provider/online service improvements in communication: the PM's office is merely part of the problem.

There are the usual 'how to contact us', 'communicate' and related bollocks all over the Google entry. (1.06M entries for 'No 10 press office'). Great! How hard can it be?

How about 'impossible'?

There is no email address OR telephone number on the press office site enabling the press to ring or email the press office. 'Contact us' has a fax number for the Noodle from Fyfe himself (hah!) and the rest of it is woffle. You can reach a ministry or department, but not Number Ten

Go the the parliamentary site and tick their box 'contacting the Government' and a little message pops up to say to do this you need to go to....the Number 10 website or the relevant ministry or department.

I did try emailing them via their form which wants to know everything about you but tells you nothing about them. After five minutes, a window came up saying 'Sorry, it was not possible to send your message'. No explanation, mind: just 'hard luck'.

Eventually, I went to the Ministry of Businesslike Pussycats, and they at last put me through to Number Ten's switchboard. I was then allocated a press officer to deal with my enquiry, and after taking it down, this arrogant little snot said 'don't hold your breath waiting for a response'.

So then, that'll be open government and freedom of information in 2009. Franz Kafka, eat your heart out. What an obscene farce our governmental system is.

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Look - this is only what you've been thinking too. So Fondlebum has been in hospital for a....little procedure in the basement back entrance to do with his prostate. Well, quite a few of we chaps have had that rather unpleasant little.....um, procedure. But how many of us actually enjoyed it?

Be that as it may, Manglesum emerged and clearly didn't enjoy the start of what I suspect will be a barrage of questions about how and why that naughty little scamp Gadaffi offered effusive thanks to his friends the PM and Business Secretary for ensuring another less successful prostate victim wound up being sent home to die. Equally obvious was the smile beaming from Daffy's son as he explained that - nudge nudge wink wink - fear not, we'll be sending you poor Brits lots of Red Cross parcels.

You have to hand it to Gandalfi, he has run rings round Britain on this one - and had a good laugh at the same time. Handlebum was not amused, however.

"I find these suggestions offensive" he said. Now until he said that, I was prepared to accept that the man vying for No 1 Arab Nutter was making the whole thing up. But 'offensive' is one of those trigger words (others include 'smear', 'baseless', 'the impression') that Bandy Wigglebum uses when he's guilty as sin.

PC Bob drowning already. 'It’s hard to credit but the Government’s case for being in Afghanistan, at such terrible cost to the Armed Forces, is less coherent today than it was a week ago, a month ago or a year ago. For that we have to thank Bob Ainsworth, the Secretary of State for Defence, the weakest holder of that office in living memory. He appears to be a decent man struggling to do his best, but is so far out of his depth it’s a national embarrassment.' (D.Tel)

You read it here first. Except that if you aren't subscribed, you didn't read it here first. You can subscribe right now by going to john@johnaward.net but in the meantime, here's the original newsletter piss-take at the expense of the person currently defending the Realm:

'People of my advancing years can still recall uniformed men of narrow outlook, plodding gait and challenged intelligence turning up to investigate one thing or another. Their names were preceded by the letters PC, but they should not mislead younger readers: these stalwart PCs would have arrested Harriet Harman on sight for absence from the marital home with no good reason hoffered, Sarge. I refer of course to the constabulary who pounded the streets of my 1950s childhood, their steel-tipped boots and small truncheon being the only weapons for keeping the peace – aside from an unofficial clip around the ear’ole for scrumping apples, and the threatening enquiry, “’ello,’ello, ‘ello…what’s a goin’ on ’ere then?”

 Although occasionally able to command the respect of small children messing about in public phone boxes, it was generally assumed by the rest of the population that the local bobby was, not to shilly-shally here, unlikely to ever get much beyond the £10 prize on Hughie Green’s Double Your Money. He had the height and the bulk and the desire if so commanded to push over the thickest wall of resistance, but would struggle with the spelling of your name if it exceeded a single syllable.

 The social role played by constables in a gentler age was rendered apparently immortal by the TV series Dixon of Dock Green, but I had thought this intrepid breed long since extinct. So you can imagine my surprise when last Wednesday night I spotted one of their number on BBCNews – alive, well and in plain clothes, thinly disguised as the Secretary of State for Defence.

There is something about Bob Ainsworth – in point of fact, many things about Bob Ainsworth – that lead one to expect ‘Hi was proceedin’ hin a heasterly direction’ to pour forth from beneath his 1947 moustache at the drop of a helmet. I hasten to add that not all of these things are bad: he gives the impression of being solid yeomanry, patient, honest and dependable. But the residue of eighty-three other things is very bad indeed. So bad, in fact, that one has the same difficulty experienced, aged eight, keeping a smirk from the face as PC Higginthwaite offered a stern rebuke on the subject of carelessly fired catapults. Then, you could stare at the ground and hope your mates didn’t giggle. Now, it is impossible to stop watching Bob’s expression on the telly as he struggles to answer questions about heartless MoD policies towards limbless squaddies. There is a ghastly fascination to his predicament equalled only by the Mastermind contestant who gets the first specialist subject question wrong, and thereafter loses the plot entirely.

Mr Ainsworth is no Brain of Britain - and a good thing too, or else he would’ve had a serious nervous breakdown by now. No, unlike the panicking Mensa desperate to exert some discipline on the memory, our new Secretary of Defence is struggling with all manner of other mysteries: what on earth did she mean by that? How the Hell should I know why my civil servants are mad? And how in the name of all that’s Holy did I wind up in this chair in front if this camera answering these questions?

I have checked all Bob’s biographies, and it is quite clear that he never even thought of a career in the police force, let alone donning the blue uniform. But none of this information helps: as he sat being asked over and over again why the Government was inexplicably hell-bent on a policy of discounted prosthetic awards for our armed forces, it seemed only fair that the news anchor should rise bewigged and say “Mr Ainsworth, please tell the Court in your own words precisely how this surreal situation arose”. Except that the man in the Dock would be unsure as to what the questioner meant: how did blown-off legs become a matter for haggling? Or how did he, PC Bob Hainsworth, hascend to this helevated position? And what did ‘surreal’ mean?

Now I know what some of you are going to say. You’re going to observe that Bob was a Union convenor in the old car industry, and displays all the sprained syntax that went with such positions. But there is nothing in the Defence Secretary’s manner – and I mean, not one tiny atom of his physical being – that smacks of the bombastic convenor’s style. You just can’t imagine him calling on the membership to do anything beyond haccompany him down to the Nick hif you would be so kind, chummy.

Of course, it’s not really a laughing matter when Her Majesty’s armed forces Minister has the sort of interview style suggesting that at any moment he might get out a whistle and blow like billy-o for assistance. Nor is it enough to observe that Ainsworth is out of his depth, for this assumes that the bloke can swim at all. But I’ve been watching the BBCNews interview over and over for the last two hours, and the nearest I can get to something harsh but fair is to conclude that – having purged the officer class – Brown is now down to the Other Ranks. From here on, it seems, we’re in for posties and bobbies. It promises to be fun.'

You can say that again.   

Cameron on back-foot over NHS. I've seen this headline so often over the last week - along with the carelessly orchestrated 'advice' he's being offered by New Label pillocks - that I am beginning to see this topic as the final, certain sign of mass British madness.

Why on God's Earth should the Cameroon be on the back foot about it? If he and those around him had the bottle to tell the truth about future services....'they'd never get elected' interrupts the nagging voice of soi-disant reality. So that's what democracy is now, is it? A popularity contest to be won by the best of the various circle-squarers on offer? This paragraph is beginning to sound like the Daily Mail: onto a new one quickly.

The fact is that Dave has put himself on the back foot, because as the Trouser Snake observes so often (and for once he is right) the Tory leader is not offering an open and honest alternative to Salvador Darlingness.

Lord Mandelson today unequivocally ruled himself out as a future prime minister. This headline appeared on 13th August in the Guardian. For some reason, Meddlesome chose Digger News as his medium to make the momentous announcement. He told Sky, "I'm officially ruling myself out as a candidate".

Astonishingly, the Grauniad was the only paper to pick it up and run the following day. The rest of we small number endowed with a brain are left wondering what might be going on here. I think there are three possible explanations.

First, Mandy got wind of a strong Tory/Libdem move to block the proposed changes to the life peerage Bill. It also seems likely that some of Peter's many enemies in the PLP might well have thrown in their lot with this blockage to cause a Government defeat. The changes would have enabled Mandy to renounce his title and elbow some unfortunate safe MP aside in order to smooth his return to the Commons. That he had started this process with others is absolutely beyond doubt; so the fear of defeat seems quite a credible explanation. For him now to be adopting a high moral tone about his peerage being 'a life sentence' is, on this basis, another example of his mincing mendacity.

Second, the whole idea of him coming back to the Commons was to put the Tories on tilt. According to my usual sources, Meddlesome did indulge in some kite-flying at the very least. And equally, he has several times in public accused the Cameroons of being 'terrified' that he would become an MP again. Given that Sonny Osborne always looks like a blinded rabbit when faced with the Princess of Darkness - and knowing Fondlebum's love of dirty tricks - this too has a degree of credibility as a theory.

The problem with both these versions is that neither takes anywhere near full account of Maninbum's overweening ambition. So I plump for Option Three.

Which is this: the last thing Handlebum wants is to go down in history as a sort of latter-day John Major, presiding over a knackered Administration and getting the blame for the final, slithery descent to the very bottom (sorry about that) of the ethical barrel. At the same time, as a shrewd constitutional observer, he may well have noticed that the Office of Prime Minister in the UK has become - at least for the time being - a poisoned chalice. Much as he loves squirting poison into the libations of others, Mandy personally avoids any likelihood of that happening to him with consummate skill, and the sanctimonious cry of 'Smear!'

What Lord Peter of the Flies wants above all is to be the eminence grise, and once the 2010 Election has been lost he will accept with alacrity the title of He Who Ensured Damage Limitation. This would make him Labour's Kingmaker in perpetuity...and an infinity of opportunities to scheme and machinate once the PLP starts an all-out Civil War on four fronts: modernisers, feminists, socialists, and backbenchers.

For a marginally more amusing approach to Mandy's Mysterious Moves, you can see the editor misbehaving once more at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9ssXcTe-ac

'anging's too good for 'em. Still obsessively concerned with her mission to make the planet a cojones-free zone, Hattie has gone off on one over the subject of rape. There seems to have been a difference of opinion between her, Justice Trousers Man o' Straw and Postie Al at the Home Guard over how strict the new anti-rape laws should be. Apparently, Al and Jack would've settled for the public garroting of anyone found guilty of rape, whereas Harmperson was holding out for death by Pirhana fish for anyone accused of rape. It's only a matter of degree when all's said and done, but meanwhile the Guardian notes that Hat

'...has had the support of both the solicitor-general, Vera Baird, and the equalities minister, Maria Eagle, in pressing for much stronger action'

Well just fancy that. I wonder of all those women need a man involved to help them make a better decision?

Seefingizzlike, bloody women walking about with skirts round their armpits an' that, fuckin' askin' for it, they are. They wouldn't've got five yards down the street in my day. Wivout being raped, I mean.

A land safe for libertarian democracy. I young twerp with whom I was until recently forced to socialise once described Tony Blair to me as 'a safe pair of hands', which I think an excellent description of somebody who spent much of his time at Number Ten with his hands in the safe. When not being a safe pair of hands, however, our last Prime Minister devoted much of his time to legacy-creation, in the shape of a war which was illegal, pointless, inflammatory, bloody expensive and against the wrong enemy.

But let's be fair, no, seriously - come on, let's be fair: we got rid of a fascist despot who stamped out most freedoms, and Tony did what he thought was right at the time in the name of liberty and democracy.

Now however, the Iraqi Ministry of Culture has launched a program of official censorship of books imported from abroad. Following the expected line of Arab logic in general, the new rule will also apply to books published within Iraq, where all publishers will be required to submit manuscripts before publication.

You know, I think we really went in there just for the joy of tearing all those naff statues down, and then being shot at by the welcoming peoples we were liberating. Certainly, we didn't invade after having read any books about Arabism, and the long, long established nature of preferred Arab governance. In this dramaatic history, democracy and liberty and women's rights and the abolition of capital punishment do not get so much as a walk-on part - although public executions, mass slaughter of Turks, surprise attacks on Israel, wars about wells and more or less continuous civil strife loom very large indeed.

If only we'd sent Ms Harman in there. She'd have sorted the buggers out in no time.

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Norwich North: the final word. There was an excellent piece in today's FT (27.07.09) by Matthew Engel. You can read it at

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ea0a3322-7ad8-11de-8c34-00144feabdc0.html

As an analysis of bullshit and old politics masquerading as new, it is without equal.

Norwich North: its real significance

While the UK media have focused almost entirely on the short-term Party implications of the Conservative gain in Norwich, for those of us using constitutional awareness and research statistics as the weapons of analysis, the result takes on an entirely different perspective.

At first glance, the result is simply a sweeping victory for Cameron’s Tories: by any definition, turning a safe-ish Government seat into an Opposition majority of 7,348 is not so much a big swing as a deadly right hook for New Labour.

But we live in strange times. The result is, on closer examination of the numbers, the victory of a far more fundamental shift.

First off, viewed as a judgement on UK government and political policy, the result is a disaster for those who would regard themselves as the Establishment in 2009. Excluding the more tangential candidates, total votes cast against the EU, immigrants, Parliamentary ethics, globalist economics and a voting system dominated by two main Parties came to 14,655. This was bigger than Ms Smith’s total (itself nowhere near a majority of all votes cast) but more to the point, a whopping two-fifths of all those who voted.

Further, over half the electorate didn’t vote at all. That’s not so unusual in mid-term by-elections, but a very unhealthy sign when feelings are running this high less than a year before a General Election. One extrapolation must surely be that an enormous proportion of the electorate no longer feel there is any point at all in voting. Given the constituency size, Chloe Smith goes forth to Westminster with the support of 18% of adults who live there. There were eighteenth century rotten boroughs with more democracy than that.

The Liberal Democrats in turn (despite a brave post-declaration cheer) can take little cheer from their vote. They beat the UK Independence Party – a one-issue, demographically narrow and expenses-scandal scarred Party – by just 195 votes. Libdem MEP Sarah Ludford earlier this year described UKIP as peopled by those who ‘hate everything Europe stands for….all they do is rave and vote no’; while David Cameron dismissed them as ‘BNP Lite…a bunch of fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists mostly’. Well, the Monster Raving Racist tendency – viz, UKIP + the BNP combined – attracted more votes than the Liberal Democrats in Norwich North.

At Conservative HQ, this by-election result will go down as another scalp for the Cameroons. Among the plotters on New Labour’s back benches it will yet again cause mutterings and mumblings, and lower morale even further – if such might be possible. But for those who fear for the survival of our system without radical and convincing reform – which so far has not been forthcoming – it will be seen as the most convincing evidence yet that MPs have woefully underestimated the apathy and disillusion that is at large in contemporary Britain.

This is why. Taking the three soi-disant main Parties’ by-election votes this time, just three in ten of those entitled to vote offered their support for any part at all of the House of Commons status quo. Or put another way, what the embittered folks tend to call ‘the system’ was ignored by 68% of the electorate. That’s a lot of alienated people.

Jack Straw spoke to various parts of the UK media earlier this week, expressing his view that the MPs’ expenses reform legislation was ‘a better Bill’ for having the criminal prosecution elements of it removed. The response from Norwich North is that the Westminster Village is now more than simply out of touch: it is a village isolated by a deadly plague it seems unable to cure.

This first appeared as an nby newsletter. To subscribe FREE to this, write to john@johnaward.net

Going south in Norwich North. I know those of you still chained to the office must find my obsession with the BBCNews channel tedious at times. But damn it, you really should tune in: it's the best fun you can have with your serious hat on.

When some paint dries in the BBCNews space, things go into overdrive. There are minute by minute assessments, on-the-spot-of-paint views, expert shades of opinion and - above all - cliffhanger links. These are the ways in which anchor folks with nothing to talk about persuade the channel-flicking, lunch-seeking, meeting-awaiting and brain-atrophying population to stay with us while we await this important development.

Last Friday (24.7.o9, and I mean twenny-four seven) the important thing the Nation awaited in between bladder evacuations and email progress memos going forward was the by-election declaration at Norwich North. Yes, there was anticipation of the elevation of an aspiration by election to the House of legislation, and all we needed was the declaration, preferably before the evacuation.

This was forecast to be at 'around midday'. But as with all things British in 2009, They Weren't Ready. By 12.15, the anchor-speak was of a result in the next hour. Then in the next three quarters of an hour (from 12.45). Followed by a progression of relativity quesstimates which went fairly soon, before too long, in the next ten minutes, very soon, imminently, minutes away now, and then at last - we're going over to hear the result. And as always, the returning officer's microphone was crap.

The whole event was ridiculous from start to finish. No Labour candidate - he'd gone down with Swine Flu. The Nutter Party got three more votes than the Libertarian Party. Craig Murray ('Elect an honest man to Parliament') got five more votes than the BNP - hurrah! The Monster Raving Loony Party got more votes than all of them put together - despite a schizophrenic insanity vote. And out of all the people entitled to vote, the New Labour project polled a massive 8% level of support.

Chloe Smith called her election to Parliament 'a victory for honest politics'. But then, she is very young. Bless: she goes forth to the bearpit at Westminster with a mandate based on 1 in 5 of the electorate of Norwich North.

It's important to laugh ( the election having been laughable) but it's also important to realise what a travesty of democracy this was. Seven out of ten electors showed they had no time for any of the three major Parties. More than half chose to abstain. The rag-tag, scandal-torn UKIP got within 195 votes of the Cleggover tendency. And the great majority voted against all the Establishment's policies, from EU membership and the electoral system to immigration and economic bailout.

This was a rotten borough electing a member to the isolated plague village.

Lord Bollock-Moan. It's odd how this outgoing Defence minister went from anti-tank weapon to being an enough-resources courier in just one day. Clearly, 'resources' as a collective term does not apply to tanks. Perhaps. This was summed up by the admirable site politicshome as follows:

'Gordon Brown has insisted the UK has enough helicopters for Afghan operations. Earlier Lord Malloch Brown said that Britain "definitely" does not have enough helicopters, before a later statement in which he said troops had "without doubt sufficient resources".'

MPs to be Gummed to death by new Watchdog laws. I've never regretted calling this site Not Born Yesterday, because everybody in every position of power everywhere asumes we were in fact conceived nine months ago. The changed Bill designed to keep our legislators from pilfering your money provided a banded three-pack example of this as follows:

1. MPs rebel to vote down all criminality in the Bill - meaning they will still be above the law. Then all get interviewed afterwards saying Courts should not be allowed to interfere, Sovereign Body, harumph harumph etc etc.

2. Jackman O'Straw comes on BBCNews with his bare face hanging out to say he is 'glad' the clauses were changed - because it is now a better, stronger Act.

3. Black Jack stresses that it was anyway important to pass it now "what with the recess coming up".

What a festering pile of old bananas. If these pickpockets hadn't anally raped the Sovereign Body, there'd be no call for any of this; it patently isn't an incentive to improve criminal behaviour by de-criminalising it; and is the eminence noire suggesting that had he waited until after the school holidays, the whole thing would've been quietly buried by those on a mission to filibuster it out?

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"Oh fuck...you mean I'm Andy Burnham?"

Fluline almost very nearly but not entirely there yet. 'Does Andy Burnham know which way is up?'. (Nby email essay ten days ago). Clearly not, but he's a game guy and learning how to wash his hands for the cameras. Basically, New Label lied about the Fluline, lied again about the Fluline and then when things got out of control, decided they'd better have a Fluline.

However, now the Lib Dems say documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the Treasury was expected to approve the scheme in June last year....but did not do so until December. Obviously very busy explaining bailouts to Salvador Darling.

You read it here first.

Follow the continuing story of bungle at The Foresight Saga

What Pandora did next. Perhaps because he is wise, kindly and a gentleman, there is a great deal Mr Rees-Mogg misses from his description of Lord Mandelson in yesterday's Times (20.7.09). So perhaps I may be permitted a little less gentility.

Mandelson represents all that is superficial, economical, devious and self-glorifying about British culture. He has made an impact on his return only because the man in charge has all the nimble people skills of the Stone of Scone.

We are heading towards a socio-cultural sea change: Cameron is most certainly not part of that, and Mandelson represents everything to which this new epoch will be a reaction. But this doesn't necessarily mean he has no future, for Mandelson is a chamelion. William may say his Lordship is not a careerist, but his loyalties and ideas have careered all over the place since the mid 1980s. And oddly enough, this makes him uniquely well-placed to be the next Blairite 'safe pair of hands': no philosophy, no beliefs, no goals - just calm resolution and an 'answer' to everything...without answering to anyone.

But liberty too is a Ming vase of incalculable value. It would not be in safe hands under a Mandelson Premiership, for the simple reason that Pandora adores secrecy and mistrusts the media.

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Ed's map goes forward. Sounds like the title of an Enid Blyton book circa 1954, and Ed Miliband does somehow put me in mind of an innocent schoolboy 'keeny'. Anyway, his Department has just announced that Eddie's big heave towards carbon reduction 'is on road map' and looking good, Houston.

This is a new one even on me. If the project is on the road, then let's hope he's using low-carbon fuel; and if there's a map then let's pray he's got it the right way up.

Down the local with the Libdems. The future's orange, perhaps - or at least at local level in the UK, where the Cleggorian troops reign supreme in no fewer than five large connurbations and share power with the Tories in another four.

But although you read here first (and this is a dig at myself) that all this is going swimmingly well for the Libdems, my initial piece on this drew some sharp criticism from those on the receiving end of Cleggo rule. Having investigated, it seems to me that the Party is indeed running local government like it runs the Party Conference - avoiding all responsibility for anything at all costs.

Unfortunately, the desire to oppose the powerful (while avoiding the consequences of power at all costs) runs through Libdem activists like 'Blackpool' through a stick of rock. One need only go and blog at the LibdemVoice website to discern this. Fundamentally, the wonks that write there shout loudly for things to be done - by somebody else. Suggest a radical and decisive policy, and the response is 'And I suppose you want to be the person doing it?' The tone says it all: 'you hit him, and I'll hold your coat while accusing you of hitting below the belt'.
There are so many wings in the LibDem project, one imagines it as a rambling old country house onto which a brutalist block was added in the mid 1980s, followed by one made of rice paper and candy floss at the turn of the 21st century. Now Nick Clegg has arrived and is trying to renovate the whole edifice without quite knowing which character to retain. For those of us radicals who don't want dictatorial snoopers telling us to recycle more farts, it's all rather confusing. For the Cleggover himself, it must be horrific.

But young Nicholas does find himself in a starring role in our latest feature (a growing cult, I'm relieved to see) The News Forecast. Although placing him at the helm in a surreal version of the future, it's meant partly as irony, and partly as a fundamental belief I have: that given the reins of power, Clegg would quite probably be just as bad as the rest of them.

Gordon backs down again. To be fair for once to the Mad Monocular One, he really did want a monitoring system to be applied to our crooked legislators that might have teeth. But he didn't reckon with The Man of Straw.

Jack Straw, the justice secretary, responding to Woolf, said: "There has been a concern that, by setting up a statutory body to oversee MPs' expenses, parliament will be subject to judicial review and infringement by the courts. (Oh my Goooord, no?)

"We have tabled amendments to make it clear that the independent parliamentary standards authority cannot discipline MPs in any case where there is a matter of dispute between the MP and the authority, and that the issue must then be referred to the Commons committee on privileges." Who will of course cover the unworthy arses of any MP swindling the taxpayer out of what he or she has every right to expect.

Ten Years After. Entirely believably (and that's very sad) it is now a decade since New Labour announced a review of Aged Care. The review came out yesterday and said oh my goodness me, there's a problem. Put out more flags and ring bells, light the bonfires and erase all those alarmist articles hiding in the Ministry of Truth: for we are 120 months on, very few are dead - and a lot more are retired. Aricept rationing has been and gone, as indeed have NHS care homes. Instead, the marbles-heads are to survive in their own homes and thus be happy as they self-incinerate and/or starve.

In ten years, millions have been born and even more millions have fallen on the mercy of the State. Ten years? How long does it take to look at a graph?

We are heading rapidly towards the desperately needy hugely outweighing the earners. So then Gordon the Great Raiser and Holder of the Vision, how long do you think it might be before human nature takes the workers in its icy grip and asks a hard, cold question: why am I working for a useless Government and useless old people?

"Ooooh" says Chloe Trotte-Hyegait, "How can you even think such a thing?"

'Darzi quits ministerial post'. (NHS website)

Hurrah. Any brilliant pillock who thinks patient history comes second to efficiencies of scale is indeed Lord Khazi of Wanker.

Today (14.7.09), the NHS has been swamped with Swine Flu panickees. You read it here first

What nby jokes about shall come to pass. It appears that at last I am to be recognised as an oppressed minority. Yes, Hattie's army of tag-spiders has been out and about, picked up my deranged mental state as a result of Northist abuse, and decided that it must stop. There are to be quotas created to ensure that viewers of Corrie are equally represented with the similarly challenged devotees of The Vic on the numerously nefarious Quangos which continue to cost a fortune inorder to fuck everything up. This will of course solve everything and ensure (as she puts it) "Public bodies with a mix of people and talents make better decisions for our communities". There there dear, of course they do. Bless.

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Let us now praise famous men

From the Beeb website today (10.7.09):

'Mr Cameron sought to make a distinction between what Mr Coulson may have done in the past and what he does now for the Conservative Party'

In also appointing Mr Ronnie Biggs as his new Head of Prison Reform, Mr Cameron sought to make a distinction between Mr Biggs bashing a train-driver's head in some years back, and what he will now do for the Conservative Party

From the same source....after China's financial boss said the Dollar was doomed as a reserve currency at the G8 Summit, the PM's reaction was reported as follows

'Gordon Brown, Britain’s prime minister, said he did not remember Dai Bingguo making the remarks. But he said the focus should be on moving the world out of recession'

The Number Ten press office later added 'The Prime Minister frequently forgets stuff. He has a well-established track record of doing it, and thus no special significance should be attached to him forgetting to hear that China is about to take over the world. For example, Mr Brown forgot about organising an election, selling gold, the poor in relation to 10% tax rate abolition, promising not to raise direct taxes and cutting real expenditure over the next five years. We confidently expect Gordon Brown to go down in history as our Greatest Ever Amnesiac'

What you see is what you get with Gordon. He's squeaky clean; he just clean forgot.

David Davis may be boring, but he's right.

David Davis is a lone, almost Churchillian, figure in politics at the moment. I say almost Churchillian because he has less charisma than one of Winnie's cigars. But he does have one Bulldog feature all of us should look for in a politician: dogged persistence.

Mr Davis has put together evidence that British intelligence outsourced torture, adding that the dossier was compelling. When it was put to him that David Miliband insists the UK did not procure torture he said: “I don’t believe him”. DD added: “The government has fought tooth and nail to prevent things coming out in the public domain”.

Why should any of us believe any statement the Establishment makes about any subject any more? That must be a world record for anys in a sentence, but it's the only way to encapsulate the truth: government mendacity is now universal. Lady Fondlebum sits in his Room 101, master of the Ministry of Truth, lies about everything - and when caught, shouts 'smear'. The Home Office lies about knowledge of police raids onTories, and the Foreign Office lies about outsourcing torture.

It is a feature of Cameron's lack of vision and cliquiness that he offers not one scinitilla of support to Davis in his quest - and would've merrily ignored the 40 days debate about arrest without trial.

As we keep saying here at Fort Yesterday, we need to change the Establishment and the Constitution, not the Party in power.

EU reform that, er, isn't reform. This from the Open Europe website:

'France and Germany create 'working group' to block reform of EU farm policy;

French farm minister: "more regulation" will be France's guiding line in negotiations on the CAP

France and Germany have announced they will set up a 'working group' charged with outlining the future of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after 2013. Following a meeting with President José Manuel Barroso last week, French Farm Minister Bruno Le Maire, said that "more regulation" will be France's guiding line in negotiations on the CAP, adding that that the agricultural sector is far too "strategic" to be left to market forces alone.  "It is absolutely necessary to regulate production," he said. He also announced that France and Germany are determined to resist reform of the CAP's distorting subsidies to dairy farmers. He drew a parallel between the European mobilisation to help the financial sector and how the same should be done to support the agricultural sector: "We must do with the agricultural sector what we have done with the financial sector.  This will be our guiding thread for the reform of the CAP in 2013", according to L'Express.

'The working group' will now tour EU capitals, starting in London before going to Madrid, Rome, Bucharest and Warsaw, trying to win support for its position. The Commission is due to table its first ideas on CAP reform in September 2010.'

Et alors....pour les Francais, plus ca change et plus reste la meme chose. You read it here first

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The Circle Line for rail and Clegg. So there we have it: just a quarter of a century on, having clamoured for the privatisation of everything (and delightedly pocketed the Government's giveaway shares) the majority of Brits now want the railways to be renationalised. As nby predicted back in 2006, the rekindling of interest in some services being out of private hands (rail, water and electricity*) is just one symptom of the old epoch ending and another one opening: others include the gradual rejection of neo-liberalist bollocks**in general, the return of more disciplined (and broader civic) approaches to education, and some removal of the commercial element in sport.

Politicshome (this is a brilliant site, by the way) conducted the research study involved; but as always these days, the headline -

'Nationalisation is the favoured option of voters across the political spectrum, including Conservative party supporters.'

- both simplified and thus superficially analysed what the results really mean. Specifically in relation to the last assertion above (my italics and highlighting) I feel obliged to point out that the research was not a straight yes or no, but rather used a 5-point scale of approval to disapproval. In fact, less than a third of Tory voters want proper renationalisation, and rather more (35%) want increased government responsibility without nationalisation. That strikes me as about the worst option one could have, but perhaps offers a snapshot of the innate madness of some Conservative supporters.

In fact, the striking thing that the chaps at Politicshome missed was just how completely differentTory voters are to those who support the other two Parties. While perhaps they simply didn't bother to point this out ( because it might seem like a statement of the obvious) there are two points I would make here.

First, the actual political modus operandi of Tory and Labour leaderships is depressingly similar....something Tory voters of my acquaintance have against the Eton Revolution: too slick. Perhaps young Cammers should take note of this, and put more clear water between his team and the anally correct/media trained Government shower. Hahahahahaha. Silly me.

Second, the problems Nick Clegg has are here moved into sharp focus. While a lot of Libdem supporters are similar to Labour's heartland (58% want nationalisation versus 66% of 'old' Labour), a rather large number of them (40%) do NOT want renationalisation of the rail network. So on the one hand Cleggover's lot are far too like Labour to offer a distinctive set of policies; but on the other hand, they are vastly more for private enterprise than Labour new or old.

Wags would of course point out how this demonstrates that your Libdem voter doesn't know a backside from a bus, but the truth is that the Party has (like most political organisations) two wings or traditions: older anti-collectivist Grimondites, and younger slightly peacenik Lefties - of whom the ghastly Peter Hain was once a member. As we noted in an earlier essay this year (See Tory/Libdem coalition) for reasons of both popularity and shared ability, the Libdems would be far better off electorally and philosophically doing a deal with the Tories after 2010 - and all the current signs are that they may well have to.

But what the Coalition essay also majored on was the wonks and activists who get the Libdem vote out, the vast majority of whom would regard a Coalition with the hated Tories as not so much supping with the Devil as snogging him.

So poor Tsar Nicholas is the unfortunate owner of a rock, a hard place and a sheer 1000 foot drop.

* The reason why I choose these three for renationalisation is that power is a socially sensitive need in an ageing population, water is a shrinking asset in a rising population, and the rail industry nearly killed me just outside Paddington in 2000. The problems are twofold: given the behaviour of bankers in general and the greedy idiot Crozier at Royal Mail, where would the list end? And rather more to the point, the Government can't afford to nationalise the Preston by-pass right now, let alone three huge industries.

** I've had a few emails from nbyers asking what being a neo-liberalist involves, aside from deranged. This is a fair question as the term is rarely used outside the US, where it was first coined (I think) by the right-winger Bill Buckley. This he did on the principle that if you're looking to make a shitty system sound appealing, best choose an appealing name - hence the word liberal in there. (Democratic Republic of the Congo is another example). Neo-liberalism is however a poncey name for Devil Take The Hindmost economics. Thatcher and Reagan embraced its precepts, almost all of which are demonstrably bonkers - in keeping with its main UK protagonist, the late unlamented Keith Joseph. It's greatest exponent was Milton Friedman, a man whose ideas were tried once in Chile and brought the country to the edge of chaos. Milt's other great contribution to economic 'thought' was trickle-down economics....or as nby calls them, gushing-up economics. So now you know

Prime Minister's Challenge. I do not doubt that now the cheats have let loose the modernisers, one of the first things to go will be Prime Minister's Questions at noon on a Wednesday. The sooner the better as far as I'm concerned, but my fear is that the whole idea of putting serial liars who always tell the truth on the spot will disappear completely. This is of course precisely what the Executive would like.

There's nothing wrong with the principle of PMQs, and everything wrong with the delivery in this the soi-disant Mother of Parliaments. The format is I think one that might suit the Great Grandmother of all Silly Rituals: but retain the idea we must, and with two clear aims. One to suggest to the public that our elected representatives may be crooks but at least they look and sound like adults; and two, to make it much easier to catch big fat fibbers at it.

Action replays have been adopted in both rugger and tennis, but I think we should accept from the kick-off that there isn't a wannabe politician anywhere in Britain who would put up with being faced by his or her own previous words on a daily, online Hansard basis. Setting that frivolous suggestion to one side, however, I think the following would be seen as an immediate improvement:

1. No braying, shouting or interrupting

2. No bum-licky questions from the PM's Right Honourable friends

3. A much smaller audience - say, only those with no Government or Shadow posts

4. No advisors handing clueless PMs the 'background'

5. No advance warning of questions except to the Speaker and his or her staff

6. No engagements, condolences etc

The most radical suggestion (which many people may see as evidence of my incipient senility) is No 3 - no members of either Shadow or Government executives to be present. But actually this is simply an attempt to go back to the original idea of PMQs: allowing the legislature to grill those who are or aspire to be running things.

For too long now this daft and childish weekly exchange of gratuitous insults has become a pissing contest between two people who couldn't hit the lavatory-bowl water if they tried. It is most emphatically not what the People want. Rather, they want to be (in the classic Reithian sense) informed and entertained.

I don't mean by this that the session should become a game show called perhaps Take Your Stick or Stranger than Diction, but rather that a much broader audience than just saddos like me would watch it on a regular basis. And the only way this will happen is if they feel engaged - gripped if you like - by the drama of something real. At present, PMQs is like watching a middle-market stage show towards the end of its run, when everyone in the cast is bored stiff of the same old lines at every performance.

What we need is for PMQs to become The Big Match - but with referee(s) having the power to red-card anyone who fouls, invades the pitch or dives in the penalty area.

In the meantime we had the usual Carry On Shouting yesterday. With Cameron in the Sid James role and Brown in full flummoxed Hattie Jacques persona, there were as usual gags from Dave and gaffes from Gordo. Colleagues shook their heads, and pointed across the Chamber, mouthed 'no' or 'wrong' and guffawed in support of remarks that were about as funny as Lord Mandelson.

Ed Balls in particular lacks only the correct cap and a catapult in his top pocket to be Just William to a tee. He has the exact mix of gormless cheek and scruffy yob to play the role should it ever be adapted for adults. But the three Hear All-See All-Say Nowt monkeys on either side of Brown did seem to have grasped that it is now all up for the Party which can't tell a 0% increase from a short recession. The glum trio - Jack Straw, Andy Burnham and Peter Hain - never rose above discomfort, and for much of the time looked near catatonic. Salvador Darling couldn't be seen thanks to the PM's yooge arse, which is probably a good thing: too much twitching from a Chancellor could damage the Recovery. We must not twitch down the Pound: this spake the Lord Fondlebum.

My own view is that we should start using this occasion to relieve the backlog of NHS surgery, as there cannot be a more sterile place anywhere in Britain, and everyone involved washes their hands of everything repeatedly. No MRSA to be found here, Ithangyoo.

However, returning to the Ice Queen of Foy for a second, we should bear in mind that our de facto PM is not being questioned about anything by anyone except for those who interview him in various media studios. This merely reflects the reality of Power in today's Britain: sod the voters, just get the hacks onside.

And lo - an apparition came unto Gordon, and the people were sore bored. Well, now we know: a job, broadband, aged care, luxury hospitals, quick cancer treatment, no more dementia and everyone to be entitled to everything.

As Bob Dylan sang in 1961, 'I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours'. There are overtones (echoes?) here of a pc on every schooldesk, education targets, halving carbon output and all the rest of the bollocks put out by the New Labour drivel machine since 1997. None of it has come to pass, and it cannot be a coincidence that a retiring senior mandarin (funny how they're less retiring once retired) told the Telegraph this morning that from Day One, the current Party of Government had been '100% promise and zero delivery'.

For once, Dave the Macaroon had enough nouse to stand up and list all the initiatives that had been noisily announced and quietly dropped during the Laird's term of Office. But the rest of his Opposition speech - to what was effectively Gordon's Fantasy Manifesto - was as always full of lame soundbite gags and tedious calls for a General Election he is quite clearly not going to get. (Lest people think I'm harping on unnecessarily about the Tory leader's shortcomings, we should remember that after May 2010, this man is going to be in charge of things)

But once the young Eton old boy sat down, Gordon came back on the attack to demonstrate yet again that, while Lord Mandelson is a straightforward liar, he the Prime Minister is actually disturbed. 'We took the tough decision to make GPs work evenings and weekends'. Er, no: and even if you had, you gave them this time off in the first place. 'We will be the world leader in low carbon'. Er, no: Sweden is miles ahead, and will this be an export to solve our dfficulties? Is the world just gagging to buy our low carbon? (See The News Forecast)

But finally, how can one make the offer of a job 'mandatory'? Let's be clear: Gordon the Mad wasn't talking about 'take the job or there'll be no more job offers'. He was suggesting that here's the job - do it or else. Or else what exactly? Summary execution? An ASBO tag? No pocket money next week? And what are these '250,000 new jobs' (plucked from the air again, and unchallenged by the Opposition again) the Government will magic from the megaslump? Who's going to pay for them? And if they're so vitally necessary to Hard-Working Families, why does he need to force them down the throats of graduates? Government target: 100% of schoolkids going to University by 2020. That was a good idea, that was.

No spending review just yet, as such. The Prime Minister's two latest mantras - dooonuthing and tenpacent - were much in evidence during Commons exchanges today (29.6.09). However, that very same morning Lady Pandora Meddlesome hadopined on Radio Four as follows:

"We have to live within our means as a government, and being fiscally responsible is an important principle of New Labour"

You have to laugh don't you - otherwise you'd string the bugger up. Deconstructing this 'statement', we have here an unelected de facto Prime Minister both saying we have to live within our means (with huge new spending plans about to be announced by the de jure unelected Prime Minister later) and that New Labour has been fiscally responsible - when any neutral observer using any available set of figures can show they haven't. From the Guardian to the Financial Times via Mervyn King and the OECD right through to the IMF, not a single mad person can be found to endorse this observation as anything other than the cynical sociopathy of a wannabe Queen who doesn't want to kill the King.....just yet.

I doubt very much if even George Orwell thought Big Brother would turn out to be Ugly Sister, but Lord Mandelson is as clearly cast in that role now as anyone ever could be. His how-many-fingers hypocrisy knows no bounds of decency or mendacity, and was stamped into the metal rod of history this morning by the cancellation of a Spending Review which would've been the only arbiter able to show that this ghostly 'vision' is a trick of the light to persuade electors that the Emperor Gordonum Bruno still has some tattered culottes to hide his inadequacy.

Thankfully, there remain enough voters with eyes and ears capable of continuing physical perception.

Right on. The 55 MEPs now sitting in the European Parliament announced earlier this week a Mission Statement which included the following key phrase:

'....guiding principles include free enterprise, lower taxes, freedom of the individual, and opposition to EU federalism with a renewed respect for true subsidiarity....'

The response of New Label and the Establishment media has been to either take the mickey or get hot under the collar about the Tories' choice of some strange bedfellows in Europe. They should surely think again and turn the binoculars the other way round: it says something about the apathy of voters and lunacy of the legislators that only the Right can see just how obviously all this federalist nonsense is going to end in more tears and less liberty.

Luckily, the debate is irrelevant: there won't be an EU as we know it in five years time.

Merv swerves back off-message

Mervyn King yesterday (24.6.09)

“The speed at which the fiscal stimulus should be withdrawn has to depend on the state of the economy. …The scale of the deficit is truly extraordinary. 12.5 percent of GDP is not something that anybody would have anticipated even a year or two ago. [Not so, Sir Merv see nbys passim]. And this reflects the scale of the global downturn.

But it also reflects the fact that we came into this crisis with fiscal policy itself on a path that wasn’t itself sustainable and a correction was needed.

There will certainly need to be a plan for the lifetime of the next parliament, contingent on the state of the economy, to show how those deficits will be brought down if the economy recovers to reach levels of deficits below those which were shown in the budget figures.” (My highlighted emphasis)

This really is Merv's revenge for having his tongue cut out eighteen months ago. We like Merv: not only did he negotiate his way to another term as BoE Governor (clearly he has the negatives somewhere safe) but he is now shifting the blame back where it belongs: with Our Greatest Ever Chancellor, and Salavador Darling, the artist formerly known as Pet Mouse. There is also a clear message between the lines here: 'Vote Conservative'.

Paul Waugh in the Evening Standard:

This on the nature of junior Health Minister Ann Keen:

'There are two invoices for Blackheath Hospital with bills for £150 for August 1 2005 and £82 for August 31 2005. Most of the details are blacked out, but the BMI Healthcare Hospital specialises in minor surgery eg on knees.

It is unclear whether an MP can claim back healthcare costs on their expenses - particularly for their incidental expenses allowance (which is normally used for office costs), but a layman would assume not.

Politically, of course, it is highly embarassing for a Labour MP - now a minister with responsiblity for the NHS - to be claiming public money back for private healthcare.'

Very restrained if I may say so, Paul.

Anti-Racism Trade News

The Eighties band Rock Against Racism have reformed as Hope not Hate. The following is an email I sent to them three days ago:

Dear Nick Lowles

I wish you well in your campaign, because anti-libertarian movements of any kind are by definition antithetical to the sort of society most Britons want. But allow me to challenge what (might) be some of your assumptions:
1. I'm a writer and reformer now, but was in socio-market research and advertising before I packed it in to do something useful instead. My long experience in this area leads me to believe that your acceptance of complete racial equality would be unacceptable to people far beyond BNP support. Private views differ markedly to statements made to researchers and pollsters.
2. Most voters to the Right of Clegg and aged 50+ are repelled by banners saying 'Smash the BNP'. It smacks to them of two wrongs trying to make a right.
3. The vast majority of BNP voters are either very old or very downmarket - and often both. They feel left out with good reason: they have been. Aged care spin, profiteering bankers, crooked politicians and uncontrolled immigration strike them as not in their interests. They hold views about this sort of thing remarkably close to working class Nazi voters under the Weimar Republic.
4. Once again, existence of this feeling in private extends right across the socio-demographic spectrum - although it is largely absent from people under c.35.
5. Political correctness (itself a neo-Nazi book burner's phrase) has probably recruited more BNP and UKIP voters than any other factor beyond sheer hopelessness, unemployment and a sense of alienation. Most 'ordinary' (whatever that means) people admit in private that they think pc in general - and hardline feminism in particular - are insane. Intriguingly, this feeling DOES extend younger. If my data are correct, then we are heading for the most almighty backlash against everything from homosexual marriage to those seeking genuine asylum.
6. Every Islamic/ist attitude to ecumenicalism also recruits for the Far Right and is added fuel on the backlash fire; there is a feeling (not unjustified I think) that it is wrong to tolerate the ideas of those who would not tolerate theirs.
7. As you no doubt already know, the BNP's two Euro-seats were won polling far fewer votes than the BNP did last time. The victory was handed to them on a plate by stay-at-home Labour voters. They stayed at home through disgust with the existing Establishment, not any desire to support the BNP.
8. I'm sure you will disagree with this assertion, but what I'm driving at here is that the BNP is (as far as a genuine libertarian threat is concerned) something of a red herring. The actions of the last six administrations in the UK have done far more to prepare the way for surveillance and technology-driven Big Brother than the BNP could ever manage given its real level of support in Britain.
9. Based on the data I've seen (and research I've done) the BNP will never be able to break out from its bridgehead, for the simple reason that - whatever view they hold - the vast majority of the electorate regard Griffin and his boneheads as precisely that - unacceptable yobs. However, 'repackaged' in a format closer to the mainstream, some of their ideas would play very well among Middle Englanders. (Hitler only got middle class votes in Germany when he cuddled up to business, the President and the Army: he deliberately set out to distance himself from the SA bully-boys after 1931)
10. Several senior contemporary politicians display the dangerous mixture of disrespect for the People, and ends (ie, their elevation to dictatorship) justifying means. Brown is not one of these, but Boris Johnson and Lord Mandelson have many of the disturbing hallmarks one could have seen in Mosley during the late 1920s. Their boundless cynicism is to many all the more galling for being brazen. There is a powerful Orwellian strain to the way in which both men (and others besides) perform the Winston Smith/fingers trick in the media - and are seen to get away with it, thanks to badly briefed and dumbed-down hacks.

In summary, I think my feeling is this. We both have two vital things in common - a fear for the liberties of the People, and a strong sense that the current UK culture is grossly 'un': unfair, unbalanced, unstable and unsustainable. But I suspect we would differ markedly as to why this has happened and how it should be rectified.
I got to your site via an email sent to a long-time Jewish friend. I remember Searchlight and Rock Against Racism well from earlier decades as organisations with a hidden, hard-left agenda.
I think you are misguided in thinking that mainstream British opinion will cleave to a left-leaning solution to this very real danger: this is not the 1930s. But as Twain said, 'History doesn't repeat - it just rhymes'. Left and Right are no longer valid terms: the divide now is controlling/patronising State versus the self-controlled individual.

If I may say so, I think you are being disingenuous in your presentation of Hope not Hate as an apolitical, pro-harmony movement in its entirety. But perhaps I am being unfair in misjudging a collection of folks with 'form'.
Either way - as I wrote at the outset - I wish you well. A rainbow coalition is in my opinion the only thing that will obliterate this appalling Establishment forever - but without damning us to the Robespierre/Danton syndrome.
Sincerely
John Ward
www.notbornyesterday.org

To date we have received no reply.

Home

Speaker Bercow. Well, they elected a radical - a man who is a true reformer and Crossbencher. This isn't the turning point, but it is certainly a pointer. The bloke will be a handful - and a good thing too.

Lookalike horror. How many of our readers have ever seen Ayintollerant Khameini and Archpillock Runciballs in the same room? Please write to advise, as I supect a major Iranian sting operation here.

The Guardian's disappearing interview. A very odd thing happened at the Guardian website last Sunday (21.6.09): it completely forgot that it had - only the previous day - interviewed the UK's Prime Minister.

I only found out about the dripping-red carpet exchange the following morning, having spent much of Saturday cooking some Moroccan dishes. I found out about it because the BBC's website and most of the blogs panned Brown's rather pathetic attempts to first justify himself - and then say he 'doesn't need any of it and could happily walk away tomorrow'. If ever there was bollocks, then that's pure, undiluted 100% proof bollocks. But it evoked an almost universal blogger response: 'Great, then in the name of God, go!'

Foolishly trying to get some sense out of the old liberal vanguard's search engine, I typed in 'Interview with PM 20.6.09'. Nothing. 'Guardian interview with Gordon Brown yesterday 20.6.09'. Nothing. Various combinations thereof. Nothing. Various direct-quote soundbites from the interview. Nothing.

Clearly, this is the dawn of the New Age of Openness. However, a brief phone-call has established that Mandy Pandy was appalled by the interview. So perhap's were are still in the Old Age of News-management.

Pandora changes her mind. Talking of Lady Pandora Meddlesome - and boy does he love it when we talk about him - here are short excerpts from two recent interviews given to the BBC:

Torygraph expenses story breaks: "For its own reasons and in concert with their friends in the Conservative Party, the Daily Telegraph is trying to create the perception of wrongdoing". (See nbys passim)

Expenses corruption shown to affect Tories as much as Labour: "Well yes, these are very serious allegations, and my view has always been that all such evidence should be forwarded to the police".

It's a lady's privilege and all that. Excellent: now let's give Interpol the evidence on Hungarian trade deals given to members of the Knitting Circle.

Pandora boxing clever. You have to hand it to Fondlebum: he is one helluvan operator. Arriving back in the midst of a storm and incessant attacks upon the man who appointed him, he becomes Queen without killing the King: Queen Pandora Meddlesome I, and hopefully last. Were Shakespeare alive today, he'd have to rewrite Macbeth.

Of course, the trouble with operators is that they tend to be what Americans call 'a piece of work' too. This was true of Blair, and is even more true of Manglesum. He is a cold sadistic bully, and both he and the man who wished only that the Labour Party would learn to love him represent but one thing: an old epoch dying away, grasping at what vestige of power remains as the Ostrogoths stampede towards the Senate.

Lord Maninbum and Boris Jongleurs are without doubt the two most dangerous men in politics. You read it here first - but until it comes true, take a squint at The News Forecast, which contains a particlularly unpleasant but amusing piece about the First Personal Assistant of State.

Through Gulliver's travelling looking-glass. At PMQs today (17.6.09) the two main Party leaders engaged in a debate which - perhaps more than anything else I've heard in the last eighteen months - confirmed my long-held belief that contemporary British politics is completely removed from voter common sense, and perhaps even sanity. It really was Lilliput meets the Mad March Hare.

Here we are, the third most indebted nation in the world, and David Cameron's entire time at the Despatch Box was spent accusing Gordon Brown's administration of making cuts. Only in the loopy world of political economics could such an accusation then be met by Brown accusing Cameron in turn of wanting to make even more cuts. And not just any old cuts, mind - over ten per cent across the board.

The Conservative leader sat there looking embarassed as the PM went on to boast that "as the Treasury figures quite clearly show" spending on welfare services would be above inflation (loud Labour cheers) until the end of 2013 (raucous Labour whooping and the largely drowned sound of wee widow Twankey calling for order on this - mercifully - his last session as Speaker).

This is the fourth time in a row I have made this point, and it's getting to the stage where some readers think I'm a far-Right let's get back to Thatcherism nutter - but I must make it again: Cameron couldn't sink the Titanic if the iceberg had already hit. And the obvious evidence in favour is that this is about as good a description of the PM's current position as you'll read anywhere this year. Week in week out, the Macaroon pitches up badly briefed, armed only with personal insults and limp gags, and every last time Brown is allowed to escape the revelation of his woefully inept and wildly impractical approach to a country going bankrupt.

I wonder what Jeff Randall made of it all, given that his economics are far to the Right of mine. But chiefly, I wonder where the leadership principle has gone in Britain - and where the political nuance and spine are in the Opposition. For if ever there was a need for somebody brave to stand up and say "Are you all mad - we're broke!" then this is it. It happened in 1974 under Healey (the insolvency, not the bravery) and its happening again now: a crazy intention to carry on spending despite looming insolvency.

There is far more to this, by the way, then an ageing owl's ire: our creditors will watch these exchanges in horror, and rack up the UK's borrowing costs still further.

Lines on the partial recount. When I first saw this phrase (used in relation to I'madinnerjacket's 'reelection' as Iranian President) it was one of those 'I can't believe the nerve of somebody even saying that' moments. Others in my lifetime have included Nixon's secretary explaining how she wiped seven hours of tape by wrapping her left leg round her neck; La Thatch and 'there is no such thing as society'; and Gordon Brown's 'hand on heart I can tell you that an election was never in my plans'.

A partial recount is like 'slightly pregnant'. "There's going to be a short haetus while we count all our votes, and try to reinterpret what your votes meant". You may laugh, but Brown's being pulling this stunt for years: "What I think the voters meant by putting us in last place is that they want me to get on with the job of putting things right". It is the reasoning of the barmy, and it is the same the world over.

As we noted last week ('old Badmood still has but a slender majority of support') President Barmy-B'eard's hard-line Islamism does not meet with the approval of everyone in the Iranian power machine. But the violent clashes are between different levels of barminess: Moussavi is the opposition to everyone going up in a puff of smoke the minute a bomb can be launched. He isn't The Opposition to Islamism: he is a sort of Trotsky to Ahmadinejhad's Stalin. He would regard the demonstrators who genuinely want more freedoms as we would see Militant Tendency - ie, an organisation piggy-backing its entirely nasty ideas onto the back of legitimate protest.

Anyway, many years of political analysis have enabled me to be always one step ahead of the media pack, and so I can now reveal live and exclusively what the Iranian Establishment is really up to: a clever rebranding exercise to freshen up their internal image and confuse the infidel.

The ingenious method they've come up with is a dual strategy of (a) all having very similar names and (b) changing the spelling of those names at regular intervals. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for example, is not to be confused with The Ayatollah Khameini, because after the latter guy they dropped 'The' and moved the letters around. Whereas President Mahmood Ahmadinnejhad is to be confused with Mr Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, because they are the same bloke. He is also the same nasty little turd who took American hostages in the late 1970s, and afterwards joined the Iranian security services.

Having cleared that up, I think it would be fun to launch a faction there more extreme than the Iranian President, but with very silly/similar names indeed. No doubt the CIA is already on this case, but I can offer them some help with names and policies. Called the Islamites - who spit on the revisonist Islamists and Islamics - their key differentiation would hinge on a radical approach to the Big Issues: all women to be strangled at birth, any Jews leaving Israel before nuking it would be shot on sight, the death penalty for anyone caught outside a mosque at sunset, and the abolition of Courts in favour of Trial by Beheading.

The Party's President Abdul H'ittite would answer to its Supreme Leader Adbul Hittlite who in turn would face the wrath of The Sooper-Dooper Final Topdog Leader Adfol Hiltet. Most controversial of all, they would worship a Deity they saw as the Son of Allah - Adolf Hitler.

It's an old trick, but it just might work.

Still crazy after all these years. There's something about sinking ships that always makes the passengers want to change light bulbs, rearrange deck-chairs and take tea. Fondlebum has been busy putting pretty logos on all his Whitehall stationery, and the cutest one is a circular Union Jack which looks like an arrow (Strapline: Driving Britain Forward. As opposed to back, no doubt).

As you might imagine, this has (a) been done to give Maninbum ownership of the flag - he still wants to be the Queen of them all - and (b) to enable him to 'brand' every initiative as his own by putting his little red and blue balls everywhere.

And equally predictable is the flurry of internal emails from Mandarins wanting the credit now taken from them by He Who Sees off Rebellion and thus becomes First Secretary of State.

Forget the Iranian election result. It doesn't matter. The likelihood of I'madinnerjacket winning 65% of the vote is, on a scale of one to ten, about minus 44: he rigged the last election and he's rigged this too, using mobile voting centres, closing the mobile phone and email systems, and blocking foreign broadcasts.

But democracy is a sham in Iran anyway. There is a powerful bloc of senior politicos and religious leaders, whose views range from genocidally barmy to slightly barmy. And among them, old Badmood still has but a slender majority of support.

With the economy in freefall, the cost of the nuclear programme escalating, and agriculture still a basket case, there remain among the real Iranian power-brokers enough folk who would like to go to Heaven in due course, as opposed to when Israel is finally left with little choice bu to blow them up.

The maths of STV vs PR. This may sound horribly boring,but everyone who cares about ethical democracy should give this issue some thought. Quick explanation:

STV = single transferable vote = you put a candidate down as number one preference....but if he/she has no overall majority, your second choice then gets your vote.

PR = proportional representation = the popular vote is precisely reflected by the proportion of seats held by each Party in the legislature.

PR is by far the fairer system of the two...it also opens the opportunity to do away with cositutuency representation in return for a massive transfer of power to elected local government. This is what the Libdems want.

Under PR, a Tory Government needing Libdem/Green support would be the most likely result - and the best reflection of contemporary public opinion. (See Strong Case for Tory/Libdem Coalition)

Under STV, more Labour losing votes would transfer to the Libdems - and vice versa. The most likely result here would be a Labour/Libdem coalition.

Hence Labour's sudden conversion to it. Cynical or what?

Incredibly healthy NHS suddenly faces funding crisis. After an avalanche of hostile emails following nby's 'The NHS is doomed' piece of last January, lo and behold the Government lets dribble out some cynical 'expectation management' releases about the NHS having 'historic' funding difficulties.

For the life of me I cannot understand why anyone is surprised by this: a nation as much in debt as we are must expect to lose key elements of the welfare system....if not all of them in time.

How fortunate that Jim 'Alan Johnson' Hacker got out just in time.

(See The Slog for evidence of how it's already happening by default)

How Brown stayed alive. Nobody has 'backed' Gordon Brown, or shown him loyalty. He has merely done trades all over the place to survive. Miliband has stayed in the Foreign Office (where he is a disaster). Darling stays as Chancellor (where he has been wrong about everything all the time). Lord Wanglesum has his fancy title as First Sevretary of State (where he will continue topreen uselessly). And Alan Johnson gets the Home Office (where he will do the job you'd expect a postman to do). With these four beasts in place - and beastly scarcely does them justice - Brown's fag Jack Straw duly went off to extract a show of enthusiastic loyalty from the backbenchers.

These are of course the same backbenchers who allowed the Iraq War to go ahead so they could get their ban on fox-hunting. As deals go, that one must rank alongside the five rows of beads the Native Americans took in return for half of North America. And now - to salve those oh-so-precious consciences - they want an enquiry into how and why the War went ahead. They should look in the mirror.

The main thing they've managed to pick out of the manky fruit on offer is a 'reconsideration' of the Royal Mail privatisation. That word has Mandelson's skinny thumbprint all over it: it's both meaningless and worthless,but precisely what you'd expect from a bunch of grumpy dinosaurs begging the asteroid to miss the Earth.

After this Sale of the Century, Straw gushed about the boundless enthusiasm everyone now has for easily the worst Leader in Labour's history. And he added this belter:

"I happen to have in my study at home promises Gordon Brown made during the leadership election that there would be an inquiry into the Iraq War," he said.

Well Jacko, there's a double whammy: a broken promise is now kept under sentence of death; and an election has been invented. Memo toWinston Smith in the Truth Ministry: invent new front pages for late 2007 please.

But all this changes nothing. I wrote last Thursday, 'If Miliband and Darling stay in place, Brown is doomed'. I underestimated the brittle nature of the boneless back-benchers, but the end result will be the same: Brown is doomed, the sniping won't stop, and he will be gone before the election: the Cabinet has merely made things worse for itself, the Party, and the Country. Plus ca change.

Jack Shit. It is part of our culture these days that people take full responsibility for something, but without suffering any of the consequences therefrom. The Man of Straw gave a sick-making speech in the Commons this afternoon, accepting total responsibility for the entirely avoidable death of two French students; but the speech was devoid of even the suggestion of resignation by the Lad 'imself.

I myself would like to take full responsibility for the existence of my two children, but without in any way accepting that I should cough up for their education/food/health/clothing/morals/behaviour etc etc.

How Brown & Labour let the BNP win. It's very clear from the Northern English voting patterns in the EU election versus 2004 why the BNP polled fewer votes, and yet won two seats for the first time: the Labour vote collapsed. In some areas around the Manchester connurbation, it halved.

Statistically therefore, the Labour leadership's ineptitude and back-bench dishonesty must shoulder virtually all the blame, as it looks like few if any Tory voters deserted to those nice Griffinazis. The socialists as a whole - especially their harder-left elements - should also remain aware that with every daft pc idea and violent attack (eg, chanting 'Smash the BNP') they only play into the hands of those who feed off the dispossession felt by the very poor.

While yet again you read it here first, you also read here first that the BNP is a red herring feinting to the Right while wrapped in a smokescreen. Short of total social collapse, they will never attract anywhere near enough votes to be important. It is the Manglesums and Bojos we should fear.

Oooooooh....

A Hain in the Arse. " I don't think people care a hoot about what a paper said was in an email allegedly months ago," Hain said, referring to Lord Mandelson's leaked email. This on Sky News today. Another twerp who can't see beyond an email to an obviously career-based change of heart....as in Caroline Thickbint et al. The last thing we need is this South African sellout back in Westminster politics: as slippery as ever, he vows loyalty to Gordon (he was only given the fucking job last Friday) but then goes on mainstream telly to reassure everyone that the EU results will be 'absolutely terrible' - a soundbite that reverberated throughout a long Sunday for the Monocular One. In other words, as usual Heater Pain is backing both horses. Never trust a man who digs up cricket pitches.

'Authenticity not presentation'. Being a mendacious, arrogant, corrupt and controlling anti-media Queen, it must have come as a jaw-dropping surprise to most people this morning (7.6.09) when Mandelson told Andrew Marr he thought politics was about authenticity not presentation. He made this remark before, during and after giving an utterly forged account of his nasty anti-Brown emails ('not in the least bit hostile') the current Cabinet anarchy ('what the public wants is for these fine new ministers to get on with their jobs') his own ambitions within the Government ('I never wanted the Foreign Office') the Tsunami of bile issued in private and public about the PM by Blears, Flint and Purnell ('none of them has said anything negative about Gordon') and his attitude to the media ('you will never hear me complain about reporting in the media'). This last one was an absolute corker, because the silly old tricoteuse made it a lie in under four minutes....when he described a Daily Mail piece as 'a fictitious confection by the Mail and their Tory friends'. Bitch.

I don't doubt that, were he to read this posting, Mandy would in turn deny each of those comments. He'd also deny ever being horrid about Brown on some lover's Russian yacht, and being a creepy little smear-merchant by suggesting throughout the interview that Marr was a lightweight dealing in 'tittle-tattle'. In fact, every time Marr tried to inject some reality, Mandelson raised his hand and talked over the interrogator. We need to keep people like Fondlebum and BoJo out of politics for one very simple reason: all they're looking for right now is the excuse to shut the media up forever. Neither of them has the ethics or the foresight to see what a complete disaster that would be for liberty: and as neither is a libertarian, even if they did percieve the medium-term effect, it wouldn't bother them one jot.

Well, Maninbum will soon be history - although it still pains me that his EU cover-up seems to have worked. But like all the political classes, this dinosaur from The Age of Spinoza* still fails completely to understand why the evasions, silly smiles and patronising sanctimony of soi-disant Media Training are now so obvious to the public, they would laugh out loud were they not so sick to their stomachs of the whole disrespectful practice.

* The Cartesian philospher Benedict de Spinoza was in my view once aptly described as 'the enemy of the traditions that sustain us, and the denier of what is noble within us'. Spin/Spinoza, see. D'yer gerritt??

Johnny Pressgang's amazing time-travelling dementia. Great title for a Bunuel movie, but a bit confusing for those of us unlucky enough to be stuck in three-dimensional reality. I need someone to explain for me here how Prezzer could splatter Caroline Thickbint's diluted reputation all over the media before La Caro had resigned. Shurely we musht be mishtaken to think the world's only non-vomiting Bulimic knew that the Europe Window-dressing Girlie Minister had already been given the chop? Only Prescott can do this, because he confuses the facts other smears cannot reach.

However, the stark contrast between Flinty's undying loyalty to Brown last night, her comments to the BBC earlier today (5.6.09) about 'uniting behind the leader', and her excoriating criticism of that very same leader this afternoon, will serve to remind all of us what a half-educated, unprincipled, stinky-poo little tart she is.

Meanwhile, Jim 'Alan Johnson' Hacker finds himself at the Home Office, a mere resignation away from the Crown. God help us all.

And Insider Research (a panel of 100 opinion leaders in the Westminster Village) says two-thirds of their sample believe Brown should go. Of the voters, 296% think he should go. I just made that last bit up. Sorry.

New Label Babel: the facts. (1) The Purnell Lone Gunman theory is bollocks. Jams decided months ago that Miliband was a spine-free zone. Pornella knew he wasn't ready to mount a challenge; he also didn't want the Crown of Thorns. As always, JP is playing the long game: glorious self-sacrifice is good for the image, especially when those around you have publicly lost their ethics. In doing this, Purnell has stored up lots of Brownie points with the Blairites safe enough in their seats to hold the torch. To say he acted alone is like saying Fergie retained the soccer Premiership by holding pre-match press conferences. (2) It's been obvious for years that outside of Frank Field and Bolsover Man, New Labour lobby fodder doesn't even make it to crustacean on the Tree of Evolutionary Courage. If the mere rallying round of a few self-interested greasy-pole climbers is enough to scatter the 80-MPs email, then the Party deserves to die. (My instinct tells me that, as the weekend progresses, the email will be resurrected....and sent). (3) One point missed by most of the media: New Labour lost every Council it defended. 0/6. All gone. A whitewash....or a blue rinse, if you like. Probably the worst local election performance in its history. (4) We said this morning that if Miliband remained Foreign Secretary and Salvador Darling stayed in his Treasury bunker, then Brown's power base was gone and he was doomed. This is precisely what happened. Three out of five Cabinet ministers stayed where they were, and the rest were placated and rewarded in order to stop them pooing from a great height on Gordo's concrete head. We stick with our view: he will be gone sooner rather than later, and Johnson will inherit an Empire with the Ostrogoths not so much at the gate, as engaged in leisurely eating in its suburban restaurants.

New Tory Story: the facts. (1) I've yet to see a turnout figure for the local elections, although initial signs are that it's been very low. There are thus a majority (literally) who remain disillusioned with all Parties. (2) Even if this swing were to be reproduced at a 2010 General Election, Cameron would romp home to a hung Parliament. Given the Government is a disarray chained in a padded cell, this Conservative performance is nothing short of pathetic. It is a feature of our dumbed-down media that only the Torygraph picked this up. (3) The Macaroon went down to Devon this afternoon and declared his Party 'united and strong'. Rubbish: Dynamic Dave is being sniped at by the sizeable minority of unreconstructed Mad Handbaggers who remain in the Party and sitting on five-figure minorities.

It is the End. The Dutch have beaten us at cricket.

Nowhere to hide. With his usual impeccably ruthless sense of timing, James Purnell stuck a sword in the Bull's Neck last night (3.6.09). Not only did he resign, but the man with the most expensive and dilatory apartment cleaners in London finally told the Brownshirt to go.

Until that moment, I gave Brown a 70:30 chance of survival. But now he is doomed. Nobody wants to be fired, moved or hired by him; and according to the Bagehot convention, when that happens the Prime Minister must go to the Queen and ask for his P45.

Unfortunately, the Bullshirt is too thick-skinned to feel the sword penetrate his neck. It is going to need an army of picadors to drag him screaming and goring from the bullring.

For a Party that claims to be against bloodsports, this is all going to be horribly traumatic.

I leave you with just the one thought. As exclusively revealed in nby (Spring 2008) if he can't have the job himself, Purnell would get behind the amoral apparatchik tendency headed by Miliband. But Miliband is out of the running, and anyway - who but Alan Johnson would want this Crown of Thorns? Er...Harriet Harman, and Squeaky Doll.

Johnson will get it. In every sense of the term.

A Macaroon once again fails to rise. What is it about David Cameron that renders him unable to move away from an obsession with internal Labour Party difficulties? Most voters are not remotely interested in Brown's Party weaknesses: they are mainly terrified that a load of tripe is being handed out offering no answer at all to their anxieties. All Cameron's 'Brown is Crap' can ever do is allow the Brownshirts to say this is yet more Tory triumph of personality yah-boo-sucks over substance.

Week after week the Cameroons make ther same mistake. Where is the gravitas of a Big Old Beast to tell the young pretenders the bloody obvious mistake they're making?

As ever of course, the Cleggie stands up and says exactly what everyone is thinking: forget internecine Party struggles, who the fuck is in control here? What about my pension/job/investments/house etc etc ad infinitum?

There is just the one very remote possibility: that Tory Dave wants to needle Gordo's backbenchers enough to make them swallow their bile and get behind the Leader. Because in doing so, they will unwittingly produce the rout of all things Labour that Cameron desires.

Nah....I don't believe it either: the Conservative Front Bench just isn't that smart.

Shuffling about in The Hoon Show. Research shows that to perform proper shuffling of the pack, you need sharp cards - none of which are bent. This may go some way towards explaining why the Prime Minister's reshuffle has become a non-event before it's even got started: with everyone shuffling off Stage Right, there's nobody left to reshuffle.

With first Hewitt then Smith then Blears tossing their envelopes across McDoom's desk, Geoff Hoon (easily the most mischievous, lying, blackmailing Chief Whip in history) was volunteered by his Fuhrer to stand in front of the shit-throwing fan on The Daily Politics this afternoon (3.6.09). You have to be a seriously nasty and useless minister to get into a barney with Andrew Nearly-Bald and come out having had every last pocket picked, but this is precisely what happened. In fact, by the end of the interview the Goon was trouserless too.

The deed was done at two levels. First, Hoon suggested that the mass pre-shuffle resignation was pure coincidence and all a matter of families, constituencies and so forth. So McBrillo calmly said well Hooners, I interviewed the Bleary one last night and she never mentioned her constituency once as one of her resigning reasons. [To make things worse for the Hoon bullshit, the cabbage patch doll was photographed later at Manchester Piccadilly station wearing a brooch which said Rocking the Boat].

Hoon's mouth did a tropical fish impression after Neill's revelation, but before any sound-bubbles could emerge, the Beeb's anchor asked had this sort of pre-reshuffly resigny thingy happened before, and Hoon foolishly said oh yes and so Andrew said when and Hoony said twenty five years ago, once. You could hear the national guffaws from here in Lot et Garonne.

But the second part was much more devastating, for here Neill led The Hoon Goon into one elephant trap after another about his Derby and London claims-switching sleaze. He fell back on what I'm now increasingly calling The Nuremburg Syndrome, 'I voss only obeying ze rules'. (And before we see this as a Labour Party disease, let me make clear that the Tory Shadow Woman present [Caroline Spelman] gave a hopelessly inept defence of her own pink snout dipped deep in the trough.)

Sunday Telegraph, 31.5.09

Brown considers Lib-Dem deal in 'reshaping’ reshuffle. You read it here first.

Plus ca change, mais plus reste la meme chose. Every day another two or three self-styled aristocrats are bundled into the Tumbril on the way to a well-deserved guillotining, and as we predicted last week the main Parties stumble over their knickers to be more radical than the rest. But I've yet to see anything suggested that is likely to change much - beyond of course the call for proportional representation.....which of course Macaroon Head opposes. (Why Dave? We're still asking the question - albeit rhetorically - here at Fort Yesterday.)

One of the spinners suggested earlier this week that there will be 'as many as 300 new Members in the House after the election' - as if this might represent a political earthquake. But it will be nothing of the sort. The same old constituency committees will choose the same bright-eyed robotic clones, and on occasion change their minds if Head Office decrees that there aren't enough deaf Muslims in the Party line-up - or so-and-so's political advisor needs, ahem, a safe seat. Hi Ed Balls - hope you're enjoying the column. My spies tell me you read it, so if you do - fuck off.

We need to move British politics on profoundly, not merely offer more gestures such as the hysterical 'we will stop calling each other Honourable Members'. Wasn't that a belter? "Ehm, yeerrs, we've decided that Dishonourable Dicks would be more appropriate". Dear oh dear oh dear oh dear....no wonder this site is called Not Born Yesterday.

As we suggested three months back, what's needed is: far fewer MPs, an entirely different Second Chamber based on the Roman (not US) Senate, an end to constituency responsibilities - and thus alongside that, a massive devolution of power (spending power and citizen power) down to local level. In short, take the Cabbage Patch Doll's urinary mega-councils and throw away the whole daft idea. (As the Bleary Midget's done for anyway now, it seems churlish not to)

But above anything else, we need an All-Party Constitutional Committee, and an end to the high entry-cost first past the post bollocks which should've gone in 1832 along with the rotten boroughs.

Extra-Parliamentary Corruption. Don't get over-excited Mr Cash, this isn't an idea for even more ways to improve your Man at C&A wardrobe. The point here (and yes, it is still political) is the need to stop heaping all the blame for our troubles on bankers and MPs. It's been fun to watch, but nevertheless it's well past time to sort out the rest of the bastards:

1. No more lawyers finding excuses for new laws, Dickensian language and old-fashioned service in the sense of assuming the telephone may yet fail to catch on. And no bloody lawyer marketing allowed.

2. No more accountants running companies on the basis of audit scams, firing headcount and taking the good bits out of the product

3. No more multiple food retailers lying their heads off about everything from source of supply to price, while stuffing the pockets of crooked local government officials.....in return for permission to build distribution centres on flood plains next to wildlife reserves and beautiful Devon beaches.

4. No more non-doms and psychopathic Hedge Funds screwing around with everything from our currency to the Government's bank refinancing schemes.

5. Last but in no way least, an end to the privilege that allows minorities at all levels of our culture to sit in cynical and well-rewarded power above the Rule of Law.

And of course, talking of the 'C' word, it's no good simply replacing one Establishment for another. As one of the hundreds of rallying cries invented by nby in the last six years has it:

'It's the culture, stupid!'

Anyone for a disingenuous LoudSpeaker? Dear old Widders may well have blown her chances of becoming Speaker after yesterday's incomprehensible decision to join the 'it's only a minority' camp.

Widdecombe not very fair

"After all this settles down" she told Sky News, "there will be 350 MPs with no case to answer at all."

This does not, however, seem to tally with the complete breakdown of all MPs' expenses as handed to me by the Scottish branch of the official Let's Get the Bastards tendency. While the 650 or so porkers may well largely avoid the attentions of a hanging judge, this will not change the sheer level of (until a month ago) an entirely hidden part of their gravyberg. In fact, the variation between MP claims is remarkably consistent: they seem all to have been equally determined to take we poor dupes for the maximum they could get their greasy mits on.

The overwhelmingly huge majority of these our legislators claimed between £130K and £170K a year. Bear in mind, for these lucky folks there is no benefit in kind tax: they are exempt. The bloody Queen's expenses are more 'normal' than this lot's in tax terms. And for my money, she earns every penny.

The basic MP's salary is £62,000 per annum - three times the national average wage. Nothing wrong with that - in theory they should be at least three times better than, say, a car worker at what they do. But this tax free jam-scam means that most of them really earn - in true spending power terms - anything between £30o - 335,ooo per annum. And boy did these ladies and gentlemen have the power to spend for Britain.

Eric Joyce from Falkirk is near the top at £187,000 claimed - and the bugger shouldn't even be at Westminster. But enough of this picking on innocent people and engaging in totally unjustified witch-hunts: let's see who the small spenders are. And before we go any further, let me announce right now that the outright winner is the Independent Party, 100% of whose members claimed for under £90,000. All one of them.

Out of 646 Westminster MPs, seventeen of them claimed less than £110,ooo. When I was but a young market researcher, we used to call that a minute proportion of the total (2.63% to be precise). That's a BNP-sized minority, that is.

Nine of them claimed under £100,000. As one of these was Tony Blair (never there) and another Michael Martin (no constituency expenses + roof at HMQ's expense + his own Speaker's allowance) and another the aforementioned Independent Richard Taylor (not in any major Party) we can reduce the tally by a third to just the six.....er, that's 1%.

So, in the range from £70,o00 to £110,ooo, the Roll of Honour is - in descending order of greed:

dennis skinner lab 66.9

alan williams welsh lab 80.5

virenda sharma lab 93.1

nicholas winterton con 89.1

desmond swayne con 94.8

david winnick lab 96.2

john randall con 98.9

kate hoey lab 100.6

John Bercow Con 103.4

Hillary Benn lab 103.8

adam alfriyie con 104.6

richard benyon con 105.7

john redwood con 105.9

james brokenshire con 109.2 michael spicer con 109.2 (dead heat)

Alan Johnson - the man alleged to have the right to speak morally for New Labour - weighed in at a fairly hefty 132,000 quid. And his sergeant at arms Ed Miliband wasn't far behind at 130 grand. Big brother David (another wannabe clean-up candidate) narrowly beat both of them by trousering £134,000.

Avid Cameroon - the Leader who has overnight turned into a sort of nob Robespierre - claimed a shade under £150,000.

A number of conclusions can be drawn from this. The Tories with nine out of sixteen got 56.35% of the good-guy places, but spent rather more of the dosh. However, these being very tiny minorities, the margin of error is so enormous as to make the exercise academic.

More qualitatively, however - whatever one's political persuasion - an awful lot of this rings ever so true. Much as I loathe Dennis Skinner's politics, the fact that he is the best behaved by a country mile surprises me not one iota. (Being a very good and honest man, he would I know regard it as a Pyrrhic victory).

Equally, the presence of Nick Winterton, Kate Hoey, John Redwood, Hillary Benn and Alan Williams is entirely predictable: all willing to speak their minds, and all decent human beings. (Although again, I don't agree with much of anything any of them believe).

But the one who comes out of this rather badly is The Widder Twankey, who seems to have been lying through her informally arranged teeth about these 350 MPs about to emerge smelling of roses. Who are they then, Anne love? And if a rose by any other name, what name would that be? Grandiflora? Jaune D'Or? Bishop's Castle?

Skinner....beastly but honest

Words I never thought I'd write, No. 491. In calling for a referendum on proportional representation (PR) Alan Johnson has played a masterstroke. Actually, no: it's a lot more likely that somebody with a preference for bowling from the other side lodged this idea in his Pooh-like brain. But even so, it is a pearler - an absolute flash of genius.

In one move, Johnson's leadership camp have achieved the following:

1. Left all other candidates trailing in the cloud of dust created by his passing bandwagon. Always the most electorally acceptable alternative for a post-Brown New Label, Johnson's announcement must now make him the clear favourite.

2. Knocked David Cameron badly backwards, given he still opposes PR (Why?)

3. Made the Libdems an offer they will - surely - feel unable to refuse

4. Positioned himself (and a 'different kind of Labour Party') as the true agents of change - and thus (with the probability of LibDem support at the Election) given his Party the ghost of at least a fighting chance

5. Put the Tories into an impossible electoral position - from which they will be forced to answer (a) will you override the electorate's decision afterwards if you win? And (b) why don't you want electoral reform: does this mean your Party talks a good game on change but doesn't really want any?

6. Driven the final very long nail into the Trouser Snake's coffin: long enough, in fact, to penetrate even the rock-like substance that passes for his heart.

You did read here first that Labour would try and rope in the Libdems. You most certainly didn't read here that Alan bloody Johnson would be the agent of it. Curiouser and curiouser.

Prepare for Tory BNP scare-tactics on a grand scale. Personally, I'm feeling more cheerful about this than anything has made me for years. While I can't stand the idiot Johnson, he will end up opening sluice-gates he cannot control: the parallel here is Gorbachev in 1990. I suspect the 2009(?)2010 British Election campaign will go down in history as the turning point between one political style and another.

Meanwhile, there is a great danger that as the major Parties try to outdo each other in being more reformist than the other, nothing will really change except the important parts of the Consitutional system. As we said recently (Nby, 14.4.09) it wouldn't take much to wind up with Bagehot's baby thrown out with the mucky trough-water.

As you'd expect, my views on reform go in pretty much the opposite direction to most other folks. I would emphatically keep the Lords miles away from any hard-working family votes or meddling PMs in the Commons. We need a Lords (or something - my money would be on a House of Elders) elected from a College of the really great and good from all walks of life, their criteria being (1) what they've put into society rather than taken out (2) evidence of street wisdom and commercial perspective and (3) real success in their chosen aims in life.

Cameron outclassed again. (20.5.09) While I support the principle of putting the Executive on the spot, it has been obvious for years that PMQs represents little more than a political Punch n Judy show, the audience for which is rapidly dwindling. But while we still have it, the ritual does act as a test-bed for anyone trying to work out what the three Party leaders are made of - as well as, occasionally, spotting those toadies who are in trouble with Government Whips, and thus reduced to planting anus-licking questions for the Prime Minister to ejaculate about.

Although he was for some time virtually invisible, in the last two months Nick Clegg has made the most of two issues plonked in his lap by fickle fate: the Gurkhas and the expenses scandal. On this plus the issue of a fairer electoral system (and bear in mind, some of us have been calling for this since long before Cleggover was born) he is now emerging as a genuine radical with policies that are clearly anti-Establishment and - as he put it himself in the PMQs session today - 'designed to produce something other than a few new faces and the same old rotten system' following the next General Election.

That David Cameron wants a General Election is hard to deny, as he asked for it four times today - thus once again blowing lots of clear chances to catch Brown out. For instance, all the lies about a crisis which, while the PM didn't create it, he definitely exacerbated by persistent denial of its existence for many months. The Cameroon seems unable to play any role other than the policeman bashing Judy over the head while screaming 'That's the way to do it'. He remains a woeful gag-man and a hopelessly under-briefed Opposition leader.

At one point, The Trouser Snake referred to 'a Government putting 200,000 a month back into work', but Cammers missed it completely. He should have challenged Brown directly to justify the figure, which as far as I can tell - having been to the DWP's site since - is an utter fantasy plucked out of the air.

My feeling is this: 87% of voters want a Tory/Libdem coalition, and without any doubt a pre-Election arrangement would wipe out those who stole the Labour Party in the 1990s forever. With Vince Cable in charge of the money and Nick Clegg given a roving brief on genuine reform, we would at last have a truly popular government in this country....precisely what one needs for pulling together during a very serious crisis.

The chances are it won't happen: but is should. (See the essay at Tory/Libdem Coalition)

The wages of sin. I doubt very much if too many of the Parliamentary trotter troughers have thought about this, but the ramifications of their wrongdoing - and unwillingness to admit that it is, as such, wrong - will stretch way beyond minor things like the current system of remuneration and the line-up of political Parties.

Do not be surprised to see widespread civil disobedience when the huge rises in personal and Council tax come through...as they inevitably must. Do not be surprised to see the police forced to take an increasingly 'political' role in dealing with those cases where, quite clearly, tax fraud has taken place.

And above all, do not be surprised to see the opportunist rabble-rousers telling you how the whole system of democracy is rotten, and what we need is a strong Leader who will make all things Right again.

To all those who've been keen to tell me since 2003 how risible my Weimar Republic parallels are......bollocks.

Sanctimonious hypocrites, No 43: Gerald Kaufman

Collect the whole set of 624

Approached by Sky News on leaving his constituency home today (16.5.09), Gerald Kaufman (literal translation from the German, 'bloke who likes buying stuff') quoth thus:

"I'm on my way to my constituency surgery, and anything my constituents want to tell me about their problems is more important than anything I could say to you".

Flinty stuff from Caroline. On the Daily Politics today (14.5.09) Caroline Thickbint was interviewed about (pause for extended yawn) the Parliamentary expenses system. Whether Caro likes it or not, the main abuses in the Upper House she so badly wants to abolish all emanate from, erm, Labour peers prepared to bend legislation in return for money. So she was forced to be rude about the Chamber, and yet somehow try to exonerate her colleagues. This is what - word for word - she said while talking to Andrew Neill:

"Look Andrew, I fink what we need to do here is have an overarching system which, you know Andrew, such that we get, you know, some light thrown onto transparency, Andrew"

Her performance was a classic microcosm of all that's wrong with Britain: an over-promoted, affirmatively-actioned harpy, hopelessly muddled about the difference between power and principle, wriggling in an excruciating manner - so devoid of anything real to say, her paucity of genuine linguistics led to a laughable answer.

But McKay takes the biscuit. 'While specific aspects of the claim have yet to be aired in public it is alleged to have involved the art of "flipping" primary and secondary properties'. Tory MP Andrew McKay resigned as an aide to the Cameroon, but in so doing made a bid for hero status: it was all sort of 'In order to salvage the reputation of the Mother of Parliaments, I am valiantly falling on my sword following the Mother of all Crooked Expenses Scams'.

Did he really say this? "I mistakenly claimed £16,000 on expenses for a mortgage that did not exist", Labour MP Elliot Morley told BBC News yesterday (13.5.09). That's a hell of a feat, Ell: why didn't it exist - because you'd paid it off, or you never had one? The poor guy's obviously got a mutation of Jowellitis. Tessa used to sign up for mortgages she hadn't read, from a husband she didn't know....sad case, but Mr Morley seems to have a more serious strain of the virus. He signs up for and then claims expenses on mortgages that don't exist.

Perhaps this is what Lord Manglesum meant by the Telegraph wickedly creating 'the perception of wrongdoing'. Elliot just perceived there to be a mortgage, but there wasn't. So - case solved then: no harm done.

Talking of harm, I wonder - does Hattie Harman claim for new roofs on account of having Fathers4Justice clambering all over hers? Oh no, hang on - she gets the police protection thing doesn't she? It only costs about £80,000 a year to protect Harmaman from the consequences of her own stubborn madness. Well then, Hat - might as well claim for the roof tiles as well, ducks.

Olympic funding (not entirely a) shock. Much of the private funding having pulled out of our World Class 2012 Olympic Games, the Government has bailed out Poolswinner Jowell yet again. You read it here first.

Where are you now, creepy Mandy?

I wonder how many nby readers have noted the conspicuous absence of Lord Nosforanus from our screens ever since the Telegraph decided to go in even harder on the Tories than New Label on the expenses scam? As we predicted three days ago, his argument about 'smears' having evaporated, Fondlebum was forced to crawl back under his cold, wet stone. And for once, the Macaroon has put the Government entirely on the back foot.

I'm bound to say that Dave's press conference earlier today (12.05.09) was a triumph: not only did he sound genuine (and very clearly make the point that his moves were merely the beginning of a bigger clean-up campaign) the guy showed great political nous in fessing up to how bad the situation was in terms of Tory expenses. In doing this, Cameron neutered Handlebum - and gave a stark contrast to the appalling performance by Harman on the BBCNews channel later in the day. Hiding behind her role as Leader of the House, she claimed that the issue was not partisan. So it was good to see the Beeb's anchorman give her a good hiding by contrasting Brown's 'it's the system' bollocks with Dave's 'the new regime starts here' approach.

Particularly startling was the appearance of old favourites The Hamiltons on the news to talk about their perspective on things. Impressive they weren't - but one was reminded of just how anodyne their alleged crimes seemed by comparison to the contemporary gravy train.

They don't like it up 'em. The Gurkhas may well turn out to have been a major catalyst in British political shift....the latest ICM (11.05.09) poll has the Libdems up 4%, riding very much on the back of their victory on the issue. Joanna Lumley is an example to all of us.

Today's Times (11.5.09): 'REVEALED: LABOUR PLOTS TO CENSOR EXPENSES'. You read it here first.

Today's Guardian: Jackie Ashley: 'With Labour in meltdown, Miliband and Johnson may be the only ones with the moral authority to lead the party'. Aaaaaaahahahahahoooohahahahharrrghhhaaaaaarhahahahaha.

Gordon and Sarah at home

Enter the Prime Minister, looking dishevelled.

Sarah: Come in my little saviour, take the weight off your feet. Hard day?

Gordon: They don't understand, any of them.

S: No dear.

G: Here I am, focusing on getting hard-working families back to doing what they do...

S: Working hard, dear?

G Precisely, precisely....and there are these idiot hacks bothering me with the Poond I mean who cares about the Poond, do you care about the Poond?

S: No dear.

G: Well there you are. It's just a piece of paper with that Windsor woman's head on it. Why can't they see that a weak Poond is part of my strategy to make us invulnerable and thus lift everyone out of poverty?

S: Because it's a dificult subject dear, and they're not as clever as you.

G: (Trace of a smile) Where would I be without you, Sarah?

S: Lonely dear.

G: Global problems require global solutions, you know.

S: Yes dear.

G: I mean what could be worse than leading a do-nothing Party?

S: I don't know dear. Leading a good-for-nothing Party?

G: Hum. Not bad. That's not bad at all, Sarah. I'll just ring McBride...

S: You don't know anyone called McBride any more dear.

G: Oooh. Noo, aah - that's right. He's gone, gone and gone.

S: That's right dear.

G: Whatever happened to that fella, er...Carter?

S: You fired him dear.

G: Errr...excuse me: I didn't fire him, you're quite wrong there - I merely broadened my advisory portfolio. Wasn't he was the one who wanted me to get my teeth done?

S: They do look better, dear.

G: Of course they do. But what do the press say? They say I look like a frightened rabbit.

S: Yes dear. I mean, no dear.

G: Oh I doon't know, Sarah - all this petty politics. All I want to do is raise people out of poverty.

S: Yes dear.

G: Do everything it takes to stop boom and bust. Sell all our Gold. Be Barack's best friend. Shut that bloody witch's coven up....Harman and Blears. Wittering on about women and woefulness - can't they see that the electorate doesn't connect with any of that stuff?

S: No dear.

G: Of course not. I'm surrounded by idiots. What's for dinner?

S: Cheese on toast dear.

G: (Face clouded in thought) Hmm...cheese on toast: will this have any ramifications for our cheese reserves? Only I don't want any more awkward questions from that pipsqueak Clegg, from whom I will not take any advice about behaviour in a crisis, for was it not his Government who demanded reparations from Germany in 1919 and thus created the groundwork for Hitler's rise?

S: It's just cheese on toast dear.

G: Did you put the cheese through on expenses?

S: Of course, dear.

G: (Throws his mobile at cat and rises from his seat in a rage) Are you mad woman? Where did you buy it?

S: At Fortnum and Mason as usual, dear.

G: (Shouting at non-existent secretaries) OM MY GOOOORD. I can see it now: 'Brown's wife charged organic veined brie from Fortnums to taxpayer'.

S: It's your favourite, dear - Scottish red cheddar.

G: Ah. Um. Good: smart thinking my little beard. 'Gordon remains true to roots' sounds good. You don't think it'll play badly to the English audience?

S: No dear.

G: Fine. Excellent. (His mobile - now at the bottom of the tropical fish tank - rings in a bubbly manner: the PM leaps up to pluck it from the depths). Yuss, hullo? Who? Did I? Umm. What? Look - I have a country to run here, global problems to solve, and hard-working gurkhas to repel - go away.

S: Was it anything important dear?

G: Oh, just some stupid voter who claims I rang her last year. The very idea: as if I'd ask her whether to honour Freddie's pension or not. Would I do such a thing?

S: No dear.

G: You're right as always, Sarah. So - cheese on toast then. Has McBride tasted it?

S: You never knew anyone called McBride dear.

G: Of course not, silly me. Well actually, not silly me at all - infallible me. That's not a bad title for my autobiography.

S: Yes dear.

G: Oh, the bliss of home life after a day at the coalface....safe in the knowledge that we are better equipped than any other home in the world to survive the cheese on toast crunch.

S: Yes dear.

Fiddling while Rome burns. It's an old line, but no less apposite for all that. In a rare contemporary example of the genuine scoop, the Daily Telegraph captivated the nation for much of Friday with the hilarious minutiae of Labour Cabinet expenses....and the promise of more of the same for the Tories over the weekend.

My own view having read some of this stuff is that the scandal is not actually one of massive rip-off; rather, it's the pedantic, almost anal, nature of some of the claims made that leave one wondering: while the banks were dicking about, an illegal war was starting in Iraq and Islamists were being allowed freedom to roam and bomb, was a new toilet seat the main thing on Prescott's mind?

I mean fair play, he is a fat bastard and two loo seats broken by his enormous arse in five years is not bad going, really. But would you or I dare to claim that on expenses? Of course not: you'd be too scared of being dubbed Two-Seats. To be serious for second,outside of Parliament you'd be worried about going up the pokey for stuff like that: the Revenue men, as we all know, are barely house-trained, and I wouldn't mind betting that somewhere in that pile of signed-off xps lies 'To lunch with the Daily Mirror', when it was in fact lunch with a couple of mates. That, dear reader, is falsification of a tax invoice - and could earn you five years in Pentonville. (If, that is, there was any room in there)

But as always, the most stupid, amoral remarks were made by the Snake and the Bumfondler. Brown said 'the system is at fault', a ludicrous remark given that the systemic code is very, very clear about 'claiming for nothing that might bring the MPs' expenses code into disrepute'. Any system is only as good as the troughers working it.

As for Lord Manglesum, his performance on the evening news was blood-boiling stuff, the quiet madness of a sociopath. 'What we must remember' he purred, 'is that a right-wing newspaper has published this information with the sole intention of creating the perception of wrongdoing'. Well there you are, do you see? Stuffing your pockets isn't wrongdoing if it's 'within the rules'. Even if it brings the system into disrepute....when the rules of the system say don't bring the system into disrepute. Pass me another egg Mr Swift, and let's have a debate about which end to tap.

This much I can tell you with certainty - thanks to 'illegal' leaks from sources: the Torygraph published this stuff because there was a clear and present intention by those in charge to censor all the stuff that's turned out to be like a bad soap opera - so appalling, you're drawn to the magnetic power of its awfulness.

No longer acceptable. Yesterday (6.5.o9) at PMQs Gordon the Good announced that 'child trafficking is totally unacceptable'. Well blow me down.

Why does the Monocular Snake keep saying this sort of stuff? What does he mean? 'Arrhh, wull - child trafficking is totally unacceptable....but you can do a bit of rabbit-buggering if you like. No problem there. And kids up chimneys....wull, it's work. We're doing everything we can to lift hardworking children up chimneys'. The man's off his head.

More disgraceful, however, is the Macaroon's performance from the other side of the Big Table. Somebody needs to tell this Etonian tit that (a) he's not that good at telling gags and (b) he's there to bash the Broon not try and be a sort of upper class Norman Wisdom.

He misses open goal after open goal, and chiefly because he is appallingly badly briefed. During yesterday's session (when McDoom's growing madness was clear for all to see) Cammers chose steadfastly to take the piss out of the madness, thus allowing the Mad One to say the Opposition had no substantive ideas. He gave the Scottish Play the only loophole he could jump through - while missing the chance to block his entry with questions about overseas banking liabilities, £285M spent on helping one family with their mortgage - etc etc ad infinitum. I mean, Mandlebum's the only one any good at blocking entries, but he plays for the other side....as it were.

Don't be vague - be briefed by Hague, you bloody upper class lummox.

Meanwhile, Nick Clegg has finally realised that nobody beyond Pimlico knows who he is, and thus embarked upon a Let's Insult the PM approach.

Last week he called Herr Braun 'a dissembling hypocrite' (the Speaker should've asked him to withdraw it, but then the Speaker these days is a Glaswegian drunk) and this week's insult was 'shambolic obfuscation'. Nice try Nick - and certainly 200% better than the Toff - but you just aren't a gutter-fighter, old cock.

It strikes me that, at the moment, no Party has the right leader. Hague for the Tories plus Cable for the Libdems would be dream tickets (perhaps - who knows one day - the same ticket) but the problem with New Labour is that the only thing they know is the identity of the wrong bloke.

Today (3.5.09) we've been hearing about how Alan Johnson thinks Gordon Brown 'is better than me or anyone else in the Party to lead it'. Fine Al, we always knew that about you - but the whole fucking Party? Gordon is the brightest and the best? So then, it's over to the Cameroons I'm afraid.

But not just yet: in the meantime, Hazel Blears called Labour's inability to communicate 'woeful', but then said she'd been misinterpreted. An inability to communicate, perhaps? And Margaret Beckett the Minister for Caravans says that she fully supports Gordon....but not the right of valiant Ghurkas to live here. No change there with Madge, who is and has always been a one for the rules - if not for the insight.

Charles Clarke says he's ashamed to be a Labour MP. So: resign? Err...no, but I'd like Ed Balls to resign, please. David Flunkett says everyone should stop arguing: I suppose that's the sort of thing you'd expect an ex-Home Secretary to say.

This Government's meltdowns (how many is itnow?) make the Major years look like King Arthur's Round Table.

scandal of young couple lent £285 million by ruthless loan shark

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