From my cold, dead hands

Let’s start elsewhere.

Malcolm is uneasy about “Sarah’s Law“, particularly when its proponents’ website has to warn:

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Admittedly, much of that unease stems from the ambivalent News of the World‘s campaign and the double-standards Rebekah Brookes applied to exploiting it.

Now consider this:

Number 10 has rejected calls for the Government to revisit gun laws after the fatal shooting of four people in Easington over the New Year.This morning, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “The firearms laws we have in place are among the toughest in the world. The purpose of that legislation is to protect public safety and at the same time, ensure that controls are practical and proportionate.“On the specific case [Easington, County Durham] it would not be appropriate to comment on an ongoing police investigation.” However, No 10 added that it was still looking at the Home Affairs Select Committee report on possible changes to implementation of the law, rather than the law itself.

Local MP Grahame Morris had called for a debate on gun control in Parliament, saying there were some “big issues” arising from the police investigation and that there should be a “considered and measured look at the outcome”.

The case certainly deserves considerable attention:

Police investigating the deaths of three women and the man who shot them before killing himself are expected to focus on why he owned six guns.

Michael Atherton, 42, had licences for the firearms despite police revealing they were told three years ago that he had threatened to harm himself.

He shot his partner Susan McGoldrick, her sister Alison Turnbull, 44, and her niece Tanya Turnbull, 24.

Officers found the bodies inside the house in Horden, Co Durham, on Sunday.

I’m sorry, says Malcolm, let me read that a bit further:

Assistant Chief Constable Michael Banks said Mr Atherton was licensed to own six weapons, three of them shotguns and a further three “section-one” firearms.

The latter required a greater degree of authorisation than a shotgun licence, he said.

Mr Atherton had been a member of a gun club in the area but it is not known if he was still an active member.

Is there not an argument here for a “Susan, Alison and Tanya’s Law”? Should family, neighbours and friends not be aware that that odd guy at Greenside Avenue, the one drives the taxi, has a licence for a whole armoury of firearms? Should the register of weapons not be an easily-accessible public document?

At a tangent, Malcolm knows from direct experience that it is not unusual for a slip to pass between American parents, before children are allowed to “go and play”, assuring one party that strong liquor is not kept in the other house. Note well: no strong liquor, but arms and ammunition acceptable. Curious priorities there.

And the last time Malcolm posted on a parallel topic, he had a wrathful and abusive response from a Second Amendment fanatic.

#748: Is John Rentoul a serious political commentator?

Well, in general, most definitely “yes”. But he does have his moments.

He is the onlie true begetter of the Questions to Which the Answer is No spot. This derives from those infamous headlines which form a meme for the Daily Mail, but the form is now so universal (see the title for this post) few media mouths miss Rentoul’s skewering. As a mark of how weird-and-wonderful things can be, this Marlene gem, as right, reached only an honourable runner-up ranking in Rentoul’s pick-of-the-year. Still, in a world where Hedy Lamarr gets credit for mobile ‘phone technology, anything is possible.

With yesterday’s posting, Rentoul’s running gun notches another kill:

Is a super-volcano just 390 miles from London about to erupt?

My colleagues at Northcliffe House have left the Question to Which the Answer is No generator on over the bank holiday weekend. Start the year as you mean to go on, I say. Number 747* in the series.

To that extent, the implication of Malcolm’s own headline here is unfair. But what about his piece in today’s print of the Independent?

No one to replace Ed Miliband? Try Yvette Cooper

There might not be too many of Labour’s rank-and-file (not the union bosses, not the pushy Commons wannabes) wholly out of sympathy there, John. Many of us were prepared to give her the nod last time, above either Miliband and her husband. The lady, though, was not for that turning. And quite correctly so.

The Ed question

First of all, let’s address the omnipresent journalistic twitch, which amounts to Ed must go! Not because he isn’t up to the job, but because he isn’t Cameron, or Blair, or even elder brother. He’s there, and (short of an incident involving the Parliament Hill buses — in which case Harriet gets another spell in the spotlight, and the other Ed should be enstooled) he is going to be there in a year’s time — when the parliamentary scene will be entirely different.

No: what’s going on is SCD (seasonal correspondent disorder), the need to generate a bit of ad-hominem excitement. The reptiles haven’t managed a decent public disembowelling in … oh! … several weeks. They got Laws. They missed out on Vince Cable. They got Fox. It’s a toss-up they’ll get Huhne. They crave the taste of red, raw meat. Like carrion-feeders everywhere, they scour the landscape for any prey with the trace of a limp.

Meanwhile, by comparison, Cameron, thanks in part to that duplicitous or not pseudo-veto, got his Christmas bounce. It’s a well-known phenomenon at this time of the year, when the spirit of joy and bon-homie is all around us. Just wait for the January credit-card bills to arrive, and watch for the corresponding fall. And, by ‘eck and Wee Eck, there are plenty of Tories and others willing Cameron’s fall.

One half-decent Commons performance, and our Ed rides again.

Heir and spare

Like royalty, every political party ought to come equipped with an heir and a spare. At the moment the divine Yvette is merely the spare. If Cameron were to bluster his Bullingdon way through this parliament, and still be standing after the next General Election, that’s Yvette’s moment. But not before.

Far more to the point, let’s speculate on the pecking-order in the two ConDem parties.

In the lower Fifth common-room, all that keeps Clegg top-dog is that big, big question hovering over Huhne wherever he dares to put himself around. Laws is still hors-de-combat, Vince is over-the-hill and soiled goods. The ginger rodent is just ludicrous. So: no heir, and no spare.

Up on the prefects’ corridor, matters may — or may not — be clear-cut. For the planned natural succession is clearly not feasible: it was to be Gids Osborne half-way into the next parliament. Gids is now past his sell-by date, and — short of some economic miracle which even he no longer envisages— irrecoverable. Which leaves Blasted Boris salivating, though he could well come a cropper in the May election. In which case, exit BoJo moping (and desperately sniffing for a safe seat). Who else? Any sensible party would recall Hague, but when did “sense” and Tory” fit in the same expression? Anyway, Hague is happily enjoying London’s finest office-suite, all the air miles that go with it, and has enough Yorkshire nous to avoid a poisoned chalice.

Some suggest that the reason why Cameron doesn’t reshuffle is because of his weakness. He cannot afford any more disaffection, by failure to promote or by disappointed defenestration, festering on the back benches. That brings us to the recent Tory intake, all by now fed up with pandering to the Whip, being fed patsy questions to protect second-rate ministers, and wondering was it for this they shaved their legs and gave up the day job? Credit to Tim Montgomerie for fostering such ambitions, deserved or not, with his regular swimming-costume round of the Tory beauty parade.

A question more exposing than Rentoul’s

Which is posed (posed! as left) by the egregious and omnipresent Louise Mensch:

“I’m not even a PPS [parliamentary private secretary, the lowest rung on the government ladder]! It’s kind of annoying. What do I have to do to get promoted over here? Am I being disloyal? I don’t know. I need to sit down with my whip and say, ‘What do I have to do?’ No, every time there is a raft of PPS promotions and my name is not on them, I have to sit down and think, ‘What am I doing wrong?’”

Note that: What do I have to do to get promoted over here?

To which we can go far, far further than Mr Rentoul’s generic response and say:

No! No! A thousand times no! Keep them on, Louise!

[Malcolm is assured by those who read such stuff that Ms Mensch's fictional characters are not always capable of so doing.]