The Times they are a-churning

This could be one of those intrusive Malcolmian asides. Indeed, that was how it started in another post that is cooking.

Let’s keep it as main text.

Malcolm’s morning trip to the doctor’s surgery allowed him to read Andrew Adonis’s account,  Five Days in May, of life in Downing Street, while the Quad were stitching up their ConDem package. This is being serialised in The Times.

Unless one is possessed of Mark Packian  (who will be featured in that other post) partial eyesight, Nick Clegg (along with the endearingly peremptory Captain Ashdown) does not emerge well.

This is part of the entry for 4pm Monday, May 10, 2010:

Gordon confirmed that Labour would definitely offer AV legislation and a referendum.

The issue now was the status of the Lib-Lab talks. They were for real, Clegg responded.

But, GB pressed, would he say that the talks with Labour were on the same basis as with the Tories?

“Well, we don’t want to bounce ourselves,” said Clegg, uneasily.

So they wanted to negotiate a final deal with the Tories while merely listening to representations from Labour.

The decision — at least on Gordon Brown’s part — was confirmed after Tuesday’s 1pm final Brown and Clegg meeting:

Ming Campbell, the most pro-Labour and pro-Gordon of the senior Lib Dems, erased any lingering doubts when Gordon spoke to him on the phone at about 4pm. “I wish it were otherwise,” said Ming, clearly dejected. Gordon called Vince Cable, who said much the same.

“OK,” said Gordon, putting the phone down. “I’ll do the call with Clegg at five. Get everything ready for the Palace immediately afterwards.”

Even in that 5pm phone-call, Clegg is procrastinating:

“I’m really sorry, but I still haven’t taken a decision,” was Nick’s opener. “Genuinely, I mean this. I’m sitting here with Vince and the party meeting now isn’t until 8.30.” […]

“I can’t wait that long, Nick. I can’t wait the whole evening,” Gordon said, urgent, insistent. “The country expects a decision.”

“Just two or three hours then,” said Nick, almost pleading.

And so Clegg bought himself another hour:

6.30 came and went. Still no Clegg call.

At 6.45, Sue put another call through to Tim Snowball in Nick Clegg’s office.

“I’m sorry, he’s in a meeting and I can’t get him out, ” said Tim.

“It’s really got to be now, Tim. It absolutely has to be,” said Sue.

Thirty seconds’ silence then Nick Clegg on the line.

“Gordon, I’ll tell you what’s happening,” Nick began. “Following our conversation this afternoon I’m basically finding out how far I can push the Conservatives on Europe. I genuinely take to heart what you said about that. We need some sanity on Europe. We can’t seek to renegotiate. I’m trying my best …”

“I’ll tell you what’s happening …”, “basically”, “genuinely”, “some sanity”, “I’m trying my best …” It all seems somewhat pathetic. And unconvincing.

Adonis’s account immediately continues:

Gordon interrupted. “I need to resign immediately  Nick. I can’t leave this hanging. I can’t be hanging on to power while we can’t get an answer.”

“But Gordon, this isn’t over yet …”

“Nick, you are continuing negotiations with the Conservatives and you have rejected a deal with us.”

“No, Gordon. Today is Tuesday. We have only just started the talks. We have not rejected you. We are trying to play our role, to find a stable coalition.”

“I have to do the right thing by both the Queen and the country,” Gordon continued.

Nick again said he hadn’t made up his mind. “As you know the working group weren’t able to answer some of our questions …”

“Nick, it’s past that. I have to resign as people don’t understand my clinging on to power.”

“Why? In other democracies trying to do this takes weeks. It’s quite right for us to to do it methodically.” His big concern remained Europe, he added.

What was Clegg’s end-game here? Was it to remain centre-stage for weeks, in some kind of Belgian government stand-off? Or was it part of the Cameron-Osborne choreography, with Brown forced to sneak out of Downing Street in the depths of the night?

Back with Adonis:

“Nick, you’re a good man. But I have to respect the British people. They don’t want me hanging on. I wish you well in the future. I think your decisions are important. I prefer the progressive way forward …”

Nick interrupted, reverting yet again to the negotiations not having gone well, particularly on the economy.

More shaking of heads in the inner office. David Muir [Brown's SpAd] texted Jonny Oates [Clegg's Chief of Staff]: “He’s not bluffing.”

Gordon: “Nick, I’ve no choice. I have thought through the implications. I cannot go on for another day. Your are negotiating with another party…’

Nick, dramatically: “Just five minutes. There are two more people I have to speak to. Then let’s speak again. Please.”

A collective groan in the inner office as the line went dead.

We are now in the dénouement:

The No 10 staff were now crowding into the war room, along with Sir Gus O’Donnell and senior Cabinet Office officials.

Five or so minutes later, Nick Clegg again. “Gordon, I cannot give you assurances. That would be acting dishonourably. But please, please don’t resign…”

“I can’t delay. I’ve got to resign now, Nick. I need to go to the Palace.”

“You are holding me hostage. You don’t need to act unilaterally. We have only spent five days holding these important negotiations. I can’t do anything about that …”

“No, Nick. I’ve got to go to the Palace. I’ve got to resign. I haven’t any choice now.”

“It doesn’t need to be like this …”

“It does, Nick, I’ve got to resign. It’s got to be now. I wish you all the best for the future. You’re a good man, Nick. I’ve got to go now.”

We wouldn’t want Nick Clegg to be perceived as acting dishonourably, would we?

 

Constitutional reform only happens if …

… it suits the interests of those implementing it.

Not just an historical truth, indeed an axiom, but the punch-line of a beta++ effort by Steve Richards for Independent Voices.

Let’s take on face value Richards’ headline:

Why fixed terms parliaments are a nightmare for leaders and a gift for rebel MPs

Our Chief Political Commentator says that Conservative MPs can plot and stir because the next election is still years away

Hold on! Surely that’s what a true Independent would wish? And … err … yes, it somehow reminds Malcolm of …. Ah, yes! —

Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion…

If government were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior. But government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate, and another decide; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments?

Indeed, the authentic Burkean voice from the College Historical Society of Trinity College, Dublin (founded 21st March 1770), of which — much later, and far less oratorically polished — Malcolm’s alter ego was once a minor officer.

Richards’ Big Thing amounts to this:

The current parliament is already nearing the end of its natural life. Symptoms of mortality take many forms. In terms of policy Cameron has made waves recently with two big announcements. Both apply to the next parliament and not this one. His proposals for a referendum on Europe and high speed rail take effect after the next election. The more immediate agenda in the Commons is of little significance compared with those post-election policies and the near revolutionary measures placed before MPs in the Coalition’s early unprecedented flurry of reforming zeal.

In other words, the health of the body politic depends on a renewal of the parliamentary mandate in the short term, not in May 2015.

Yet, as he makes clear, with little to do, and at a time when MPs should be honing their knives for re-election, it’s all gone deadly, flatly dull. The death of the Bill to change boundaries was the last straw, which is why (even after Clegg slit its throat) the Bill was kept in suspended animation while all kinds of pressures were brought to bear:

• Over the weekend, were the DUP really told they could exempt Northern Ireland, if only …
• Why does James Kirkup (who should know better) and other susceptible post-adolescents keep afloat the notion that the Bill can be revived?

And, for the Satan’s Blood (“800,000 Scoville units”) in your political chilli, muse on what MPs get up to, when otherwise not exerted. Why, they plot, of course! Or, as Richards renders it:

There will be no election in 2014. After the next 12 months there will be another whole year before the election moves fully into view. There is still plenty of time to be disloyal, to speak up for principled conviction, to plot and plan against a leader. This has some danger for Clegg. But Cameron is the main victim as news surfaces of a plot to install a successor … if he loses the election. Such plots happen for many reasons. One is that Conservative MPs have time on their hands, lots of it. They will rally round next year, but not this. The fixed-term has made prime ministerial life less secure rather than more.

Even so, Malcolm has another gripe with Richards’ piece, particularly so in the rest of that final paragraph:

Constitutional reform only happens if it suits the interests of those implementing it. Presumably Cameron thought that in the unusual circumstances of a Coalition a fixed-term would bring stability. But most fixed-terms in other countries last a maximum of four years. Five years is far too long. And of those five this is much the most dangerous for leaders hoping to flourish when the still distant election finally arrives.

As Malcolm recalls, the LibDems, suspicious that Cameron and Osborne would dump them were an electoral opportunity to open, inserted the time element in the coalition agreement. Now, what could possibly have provoked that partisan fear into the pre-nup?

Second, Richards is absolutely correct. Five years was, is and always will be too long. Malcolm’s Pert Young Piece had considerable difficulty in  explicating the five-year term, at the Anzac Cove gathering, 2012, to a band of highly-dubious antipodean democrats. It’s also been commonly accepted, nearer home, ever since the Fixed Term Parliaments Bill was first out there in the wild. Anyway, consider:

• The “ones-we’re-bound to lose” (Macmillan-Home in 1959-64; Wilson-Callaghan in 1974-79, Major in 1992-97; Blair-Brown in 2005-10) went into a fifth year;
• To which might be added the “one we miraculously didn’t lose” (Major, 1992) which also went to the wire.

Versus:

• the ones “we can win” (Thatcher in 1983, 1987; Blair in 2001, 2005) which took advantage of the opportunistic electoral windows.

On that basis alone, the 2010-15 government had given away its main electoral advantage: the chance for any prime minister to exploit a particular moment, one when the economic and electoral cycles could be matched. So, a Malcolmian prediction, when the next parliament assembles, if there’s a majority government, the 2011 Act will be repealed in short order and shall hear no more of fixed -terms.

In short, there’s that gross misunderstanding: in the unusual circumstances of a Coalition a fixed-term would bring stability. Richards, wisely predicates that with the weaselly “presumably”. Consider the normality of UK politics: in the forty years from Wilson to Cameron we will have had just three governments defenestrated — in 1979, 1997 and 2010. The success of Gordon Brown was that the expected Tory take-over didn’t happen (and, in Malcolm’s book, history will be very much kinder to Brown than current poison has it).

Burke, whom we had above, had the Fixed Term Parliaments Act bang to rights, and as far back as 1780:

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. In such a country as this they are of all bad things the worst, worse by far than anywhere else; and they derive a particular malignity even from the wisdom and soundness of the rest of our institutions

Let’s add a word to the wise:

The people can recognise them. And resent them

Abominable Cllr Phibbs: appalling arithmetic

More Harry Phibbs:

The defeat of boundary reform this afternoon, by 334 votes to 292, is not only bad for the Conservative Party but also for democracy.

The average annual cost to the taxpayer of a Member of Parliament is £590,000 a year (a peer costs us £130,000 on average while a Euro MP comes in at 1.79 million a time.) Of course it could be argued that reducing the cost of politics by reducing the number of MPs by 50 and saving a few million a year is modest set against state spending £700 billion. You could say the same about that element of our bill which covers MPs expenses. Yet it still matters. There is a question of MPs setting an example when the size of the rest of the public sector workforce is being cut.

That’s another of those waffles that seems superficially OK, but falls apart under any kind of scrutiny. After all, it is largely a direct rip from that journal of dubious record, the Daily Mail.

More to the point

David Cameron has created more peers more quickly than any of his predecessors: 126 since May 2010. That’s a bit more than one every eight days. So, taking Phibbs’s accountancy at face value (which is more than it’s worth), Cameron’s inflation of the Lords has cost the nation £16,380,000 a year. There’s a bit of off-setting available, then.

There are currently in excess of 800 members of the Lords. The Clegg proposal would have reduced this to 450. Again, accepting Phibbs’s back-of-fag-packet arithmetic, Clegg’s proposed changes could have put some £40-45 million annually into the nation’s back pocket. Every little helps.

For the record, for his services in 2011-12, Cllr Phibbs, received £32,898 (about the fourth  highest dibs among the 46 members) from the grateful Council Taxpayers of the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham.

The Euro-phantasma

The EU is not perfect. One of the smaller changes that need to happen is the agreement that the European Parliament has a single seat, and doesn’t flit between Brussels and Strasbourg — and even Luxembourg. In point of fact, the EU Parliament has agreed just that. Not surprisingly, France has vetoed the desirable plumping for Brussels. Let it rest that the vast majority of MEPs would opt for Brussels; but that the Council of Ministers (i.e. Dave Cameron and his twenty-six mates) cannot get their acts together.

That should undermine the notion that a Euro MP comes in at 1.79 million a time. She or he doesn’t: the incompetence of national governments — not excluding our, and that of Cllr Phibbs — does.

What should concern us far, far more is the ‘democratic deficit’ — the lack of any direct constraints on EU administration. The same could be said for a UK government which can fix its own terms without reference to any mandates. Yes, Cllr Phibbs, we didn’t hear your affronted shrieks when the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill went through on Tory votes. Have a chat to our antipodean cousins (who believe a couple of years is enough to avoid corruption) and explain that one.

Saying “different things”, South Antrim

There was a brief note on ConHome:

Boundary changes blow

“David Cameron’s slim hopes of pushing through boundary changes that would deliver the Tories 20 extra safe seats have been dealt a blow by the Ulster Unionists.” - The Times (£)

 Malcolm hadn’t seen this elsewhere, apart from below the fold on page 17. So he thinks The Times pay-wall should give way:

Unionists deal blow to Tory boundary plan

Roland Watson Political Editor

David Cameron’s slim hopes of pushing through boundary changes that would deliver the Tories 20 extra safe seats have been dealt a blow by the Ulster Unionists.

The Tories need support from across the minor parties if they are to see through the changes after Nick Clegg said he would no longer support them following the defeat last summer of his plans to reform the House of Lords.

But William McCrea, the DUP MP for South Antrim, said he would not back the changes, which would cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600, and in Northern Ireland from 18 to 16.

Mr McCrea also told The Times that the boundary review process should be halted quickly to prevent public money being wasted.

Government sources who have tried to canvass support from the DUP said that “different Unionists say different things”.

The Tories would need all of the eight DUP MPs and six SNP MPs to have the chance of overhauling the 312 combined tally of Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs.

Mr Cameron had been pressed by the 1922 Committee to force boundary changes through before the election, thus boosting Tory hopes. But Labour and Liberal Democrat peers are expected to win a vote today that would delay any changes until 2018.

Dr McCrea may have the dogma, even if the hair has AWOLed over the years. Explaining the abstruse connection must await the end of this post.

The devil is in the numerical detail

Anyone with half a wit knew that, once Clegg had pulled the plug, the baby was out with the bath-water. Subsequently Paul Goodman came up on ConHome to regurgitate his calculations, which amount to 320 for the Tory gerrymander and 321 against. His punch-line acknowledges potentially-defaulting Nadines:

On the darker side, the biggest Commons obstacle to the new boundaries could be Conservative MPs themselves.  More gain than lose from the changes, but not all losers can be guaranteed to vote for their likely or certain removal from the next Parliament.

Doing the maths while minding mice at the crossroads? [See The Hair of the Dogma, page 171, and all is apparent.]

The political cavy

Two years back, when Cameron shimmied off for the half-term break, we all had a moment of mirth:

Asked if he was in charge of the nation, Mr Clegg told Metro: ‘Yeah, I suppose I am. I forgot about that.’

Later that year, in August, Clegg was once again ‘in charge’:

London’s in flames and the economy’s going up in smoke . . . but don’t worry, I’m in charge, says calamity Clegg as Cameron and Osborne stay on holiday

Nick Clegg today insisted the Government was still working ‘very effectively’ despite David Cameron and George Osborne remaining abroad.

The Deputy Prime Minister rejected criticism over the three most powerful men in Westminster taking a holiday at the same time after returning to work.

He said: ‘I reject completely this notion that somehow this Government hasn’t been functioning very effectively indeed last week and this week.

‘I have been speaking to members of the Government. I spoke to the Prime Minister this morning, to the Chancellor last night, to the Home Secretary yesterday, to the Business Secretary, to the Energy Secretary, to the Foreign Secretary; we are in constant contact with each other and we are working effectively together as a team this week as we do every week of the year.’

The Pert Young Piece of Redfellow Hovel shrewdly noted that Clegg’s days of deputising seem to have been curtailed.

She made a comparison with the infant who was entrusted with the weekend care of the classroom guinea pig — but only the once.

Now for the missing words round …

The Guardian website appends a word-cloud for the ConDem mid-term review:

What’s missing? Well, three that jump to mind are:

• Deficit. Is it there? Has it gone away? Actually, no: it is the very first section of the published document, where the word gets the grand total of just six uses, one of which is the section title. Clearly the message is: “Nothing to see here. Move along now!”.
• Unemployment. Even though the the Office for Budget responsibility are reckoning on the numbers increasing by 200,000 in 2013, it also seems to have been vanished. Again, not quite: the word gets three outings in the Jobs and Welfare section (nice conjunction of two very different ideas, but it tells us where we’re being driven). Two of those uses are specifically in connection with “youth unemployment”, the third is the mantra about “making work pay” for those “stuck in unemployment and poverty traps.”
• Labour. The previous government is no longer responsible for the mythical mess? Perhaps that one’s unfair: even the ConDems seem to have recognised “That was then. This is now.” Otherwise we are expected to decode “the previous administration”: the meerkats no longer mention by name the dreaded mongoose.

Malcolm has resolved not to suffer much further: Andrew Sparrow’s observation [@ 3:23 pm] was:

I’m glad I don’t have to turn that into a splash. I haven’t had time to read the mid-term review yet, but colleagues who have taken a look are saying it is pitifully thin. And we did not learn a great deal from the press conference either, although Cameron and Clegg did a reasonable job quashing speculation that the coalition may collapse before 2015.

Guido Fawkes‘s shouts and claps out-voice the deep mouth’d sea normally precede any major Tory effusion. On this occasion the mighty whiffler was subdued:

It reads an awful lot like the Coalition Academy letter in Private Eye…

In connection with Staines-by-name-and-by-nature reading such a turgid document so fast, Dr Johnson’s comparison of Quaker women preaching comes to mind: it —

 … is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.

With a deep sigh, Malcolm recognises that, short of the Crossrail excavation setting off a major volcano under Canary Wharf (a consummation devoutly to be wish’d), overnight large quantities of newsprint will be expended this non-event. And we’re no longer allowed to recycle the waste for useful fish-and-chip wrapper *.

* Memo to self: where did that expression originate?

A Nelsonian eye

Fraser Nelson, at The Spectator, always gives good value, even when one needs violently to disagree. Actually, says Malcolm, that’s the best journalism: it makes one think, one has to ponder counter-arguments, and we all benefit from rubbing against the grain.

Here is the man himself:

Ed Miliband has adopted a rather simple strategy: do nothing, and wait for your opponents to screw up. It’s lazy, but undoubtedly effective. The Tories are playing along perfectly. The last week has given plenty ammunition for his new theme — which he repeated during his union Sponsored Walk yesterday — ‘they think they are born to rule, but they are not very good at it.’

There are five short(ish) paragraphs of that: Nelson believes in making his play, and leaving us to it. Good for Fraser — presumably he doesn’t pay himself by the line.

Labour-loyalists night be warmed by this died-in-the wool Tory’s conclusion:

Now, I think an Ed Miliband victory would be a calamity for Britain — he has no policies and his ‘predistribution’ nonsense suggests naïveté of the most dangerous kind. But recent weeks have done nothing to change the balance of probability pointing — just — to Ed Miliband sending Christmas cards from No 10 in just three years’ time.

There’s partisan loyalty and there’s realism: it looks as if Mr Nelson gets them both there. The telling headline, in Spectator tasteful red,  is:

Ed Miliband’s winning strategy

Malcolm took his dissection kit to that Nelsonian introduction:

Ed Miliband has adopted a rather simple strategy: do nothing, and wait for your opponents to screw up.

Well, yes. All administrations fall foul of time: the gilt wears off, the guilt sets in. The rate of polling attrition is usually measured at 1% per annum or so. It’s just that this shower accelerate the process immeasurably. Or, as Uncle Bill Shakespeare had it:

Thou hast described
A hot friend cooling: ever note, Lucilius,
When love begins to sicken and decay,
It useth an enforced ceremony.
There are no tricks in plain and simple faith;
But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,
Make gallant show and promise of their mettle;
But when they should endure the bloody spur,
They fall their crests, and, like deceitful jades,
Sink in the trial.

Ooh, err, Missus. From 1599, and still rings a bell.

Moreover, the whole ideology (not a good word ever to use in any British political context) of this ConDem coalition was to come in with a Plan, and in a fixed timetable to deliver it. Such sweet innocence.

As soon as any sensate being heard debt reduction, constitutional and electoral systems, welfare simplification, ‘eddicashun’ , Old Uncle Tom Cobley ‘n ‘ all, would all be sorted in a fixed time scale, eyes misted over. We all muttered, “Like hell’.  The more a government attempts, the less it will achieve — simply because targets are not that accessible, and the Great British Public simply do not like change. They are, and always have been small-c ‘conservative’. As it says on that eighteenth-century church bell in Essex:

Success to the Church of England, and no enthusiasm!

Apart from anything else, a fixed five-year parliament, with a definitive election date and closure set for May 2015, was guaranteed to work against the economic cycle. It denies the administration the one clear advantage it has always had — to go to the electors at the moment of its choosing. Those over-educated, but politically-illiterate public-school boys hadn’t understood Shakespeare’s pragmatism in Henry V, being dazzled by the initial flashy, bumptious rhetoric:

we’ll bend it to our awe,
Or break it all to pieces: or there we’ll sit,
Ruling in large and ample empery ..

It’s lazy, but undoubtedly effective.

Rubbish. The hardest job in British politics is to lead an Opposition — particularly a Labour one, in conflict with the bulk of the press, and the ever-surging power of Murdochery:

• The first aim is to establish a personality — and Miliband has done that against a sustained onslaught from the capitalist press barons. Who now speaks lightly of ‘Red Ed’? Even Miliband himself makes a joke of it in his recent Conference speech.
• Second base is to control the party: the amazing thing is how little dissent there has been in the Labour Party, given that drubbing through 2008-10. Compare the situation in 1980-82. If there was any doubt over Miliband’s grasp it was that he deliberately courted the booing of union extremists at the Hyde Park Rally yesterday.
• Third base is to win the weekly jousting at Prime Minister’s Questions (so taking ownership of the thirty-second clip on the evening news bulletins). Over recent months Miliband has succeeded, against all the odds, in matching , confronting, annoying and seeing off Cameron. As long as Cameron cannot control his inner Flashman, he is doomed. Last week’s PMQs was a total disaster for him. Not only did Miliband draw blood over Mitchell as ‘toast’, Cameron offended conservative and parliamentary principles (certainly those of ‘good manners’ and noblesse oblige) by his dismissal of Chris Bryant:

Do you know what? Until he apologises, I am not going to answer his questions—[ Interruption]

Even Tory polemicists regarded one that as ‘possibly unwise’. So, next:

• The Home Run is when the Tory press, as Nelson does here, start to see the light:

The Tories are playing along perfectly.

Not just the Tories. The LibDem element is pulling its weight.

The magnificent, magisterial Andrew Rawnsley, doing today’s Observer opinion piece, listed the heads for being mounted on spikes:

I can’t help feeling a tiny spasm of sympathy for the fallen chief whip. In the bumper book of cabinet resignations, a volume to which the coalition has now added four entries, this is a most bizarre chapter. One of his colleagues asks: “Should someone have a 30-year career destroyed because of a seven-second outburst?” You know, that’s a reasonable question.

There are strong arguments for why certain members of this cabinet ought to resign. Creating a complete mess of the reform of Britain’s most important public service would be a sound reason to leave ministerial office, but Andrew Lansley is still in the cabinet. Becoming intimately enmeshed with a media corporation to a degree that would be unacceptable even if that company were not also the subject of a criminal investigation would be another powerful reason for a minister to quit, but Jeremy Hunt is still in the cabinet, as, for that matter, is David Cameron.

Breaking a solemn manifesto pledge not to increase tuition fees could be regarded as a compelling reason to resign, but Nick Clegg and his Lib Dem colleagues are still sitting around the top table. In comparison, briefly losing your rag with a police officer seems to sit at the very trivial end of the spectrum of resignation-worthy offences, the more so when the officer involved had long since accepted an apology and the police had said they were taking no further action.

True enough. Indisputably so. Except that’s not the measure of this particular cock-up. As Malcolm was saying elsewhere:

General opinion now has it that such Mitchell outbursts were not previously unknown. So the answer might be “prevention rather than cure”. Note how, after “Thrasher”, we have the emollient Sir George — whom I’d regard as an inspired choice. 

My complaint above, and previously, is not whether the PM handled it badly (and he did), but what went wrong with the whole Downing Street operation. Any decent PR operator (hmmm … can we think of one?) should recognise when, if and how a “bad press” moment is containable. From the beginning this one wasn’t.

Similarly, once ‘Gids’ Osborne was rumbled over his shimmying into First Class on Virgin Rail, he should have had the sense to busy himself publicly with impressive paper-work.  Quite honestly, it didn’t matter if he were marking up form for the Profab Windows Handicap at Bath. Just look busy, puzzled, committed, engaged, involved in the public good. He didn’t: instead he allowed himself to be snapped, shoulders adjacent, with the pouting Polly, apparently watching an entertainment on an iPad (as right).

Which brings us to:

The last week has given plenty ammunition for his new theme — which he repeated during his union Sponsored Walk yesterday — ‘they think they are born to rule, but they are not very good at it.’

 And that is the bottom line here. For Miliband, by comparison, is getting good at it. Compare Osborne’s rail trip (and the public image thereof) with this:

The pendulum is swinging

Miliband may be über-Geek, but sooner, rather than later, the nation will finally tire of public-school amateurs.

“Politics is rough and I play like it.”

That’s out of the playbook of Ana Sol Alliegro (as right), whose name comes close to combining a bad pun, a Mexican beer, and the worst car even British Leyland managed to produce. She appears in the Miami Herald as the star of a convoluted Floridan political scandal:

From a shooting to shoplifting, David Rivera’s pal in FBI probe has checkered past

 Ana Alliegro, who has had previous run-ins with the law, isn’t cooperating with the FBI or a federal grand jury investigating the campaign finances of Justin Lamar Sternad and the possible ties to Rep. David Rivera.

When Justin Lamar Sternad met Ana Sol Alliegro at a Miller’s Miami Falls Ale House, he didn’t know the political consultant would help lead his campaign into the FBI’s crosshairs or that she had prior legal run-ins — including the time she shot at her ex-husband while naked.

Malcolm assures all and sundry that the rest of that story lives up to that early promise. To think that he had assumed Carl Hiaasen wrote satirical fiction. Improve on this, Carl! —

She then sat naked at a desk with her leg up and compared the gun to a male sexual organ.

“If you think your [expletive] is powerful (showing the gun), this is mine,” Alliegro told ["her ex-husband, Moshe Cosicher, at his Tigertail Ave. home in Coconut Grove"], who tried to ignore her by going to make coffee, a report said. Alliegro followed him and told him to sit on the couch.

She fired a round into the ceiling.

“You see. It’s loaded — this is business,” Alliegro allegedly said. He tried to leave.

Somethings must run in the genes: that story has three credited by-lines. One is Scott Hiaasen McAputo, “22-year-old son” of the aforesaid,

who once deflected questions from a high school typing teacher about his Father-The-Writer by saying his dad wrote how-to home repair books.

Our British domestic scene rarely manages such delights as Ana Sol Alliegro, and her direct approach to politics and personal relations. We do our best, even in these days of the ConDem degeneracy:

• David Laws, the shortest lived Chief Secretary to the Treasury, now happily redeemed and whitewashed after
  • being guilty of a series of serious breaches of the rules, over a considerable period of time.
• Huhne, the first Cabinet minister in all British history to resign over a criminal charge. We have Regina v Christopher Huhne and Vasiliki Pryce, marked in our diaries for 2nd October, with interest.
  
• Liam Fox, who had a cavalier attitude to charity law, and then confused the national interest with those of his close friend, Mr Adam Werrity.
• David Cameron himself, to whom access could be bought through Peter Cruddas.
• David Cameron, again, who is severely confused about “pledges”, “promises” and “aspirations”, not just on the inevitable EU referendum, but on two score other matters — and counting.
• His confederate-in-deceit, Nick Clegg, who apologises not for breaking his word, but for giving it in the first place.
• Now Andrew Mitchell, who after six days still hash’t managed to produce a coherent account of what he thinks happened at the Downing Street gates. Yes, he used foul language — that admission came along about Day Four — but the “fucking” was only employed “adjectivally”. As Malcolm has put himself at pains to point out, an Old Rugbeian and a History M.A. (Cantab) should be able to recognise the difference between an adjective and an adverb of degree.

A Daley dose

All this, happily, is severely up-the-nose of Janet Daley at the Telegraph blogs. For all sorts of reasons what is about to ensue, the combination of author, subject, context and medium, seems almost as surreal as La Belle Dame (sans ou avec merci) Alliegro. Yet, here it is:

Time to tell the truth about the “nasty” party: as someone who has defended the Conservatives (or at least defended their arguments) for so many years, it is time to come clean. Tories can be bloody difficult to like. The Andrew Mitchell Debacle is not an uncharacteristic, deranged and inexplicable lapse. It is just an extreme example of the kind of attitude with which many people who circulate in this world are familiar.

While most of us who associate with Conservatives do not get sworn at or described at “plebs”, we (by which I mean those not included in a small circle of either known-since-childhood social intimates or devoted sycophants whose uncritical loyalty is beyond question) have been variously snubbed, dismissed, or found ourselves becoming pointedly invisible in the presence of people to whom we are no longer of use.

She is remarkably warm by contrasting all this:

with Labour politicians – even though we are clearly in genial disagreement over major issues. They inevitably greet me with warm recollection years after a joint radio or television gig – even if the occasion involved heated conflict.

Then it gets down and dirty.

Ms Daley expresses a variation of the distaste many of us, including Malcolm, have felt for some time:

it is the Tory modernisers – perhaps because they are more likely to  be “toffs” than striving achievers from ordinary backgrounds – who are the worst. It is not the Thatcherite, aspirational, state school-educated Tories who look over your shoulder when they are talking to you: it is the snotty, condescending “one nation” paternalists for whom you are only of interest so long as you are being “supportive” (ie as faithful as a Labrador). No names, no pack drill, but you know who you are.

Oooh, err, Missus.

In one episode (season 4, episode 1) of The West Wing, President Bartlet meets a young Congressman, Peter Lien. Bartlet has the handshake farewell line: Welcome to the game that never ends.

What Malcolm didn’t appreciate was here is a quotation — as many of Sorkin’s gems deliberately and referentially are. This one is from a life-long socialist, George Reedy —(below, laid back with the characteristic hair), LBJ’s press secretary:

Politicians will always see the press as an arena for warfare… The concept that newspaper or television news exists to foster the political dialogue in a free society is incomprehensible to the political mind. Welcome to the game that never ends and will pull you in all directions at once!

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