This man wants watching. Seriously.

David Tredinnick MP.

Government funding for 'medical astrology'?

Excuse me?

Just how much more mind-rape do these villainous, delusional bastards think I can take from them before I go completely ape-shit and start throwing things?

Help prosecute Jacqui Smith

Ms Smith is a teacher. How would you explain this in an ethics lesson:

'I've been caught cheating on my expense claims. If I say sorry I don"t have to repay £100,000 to the public and I can just retire with a £500,000 pension pot from the taxpayer.' Source

Go on. Give him a tenner. You know you want to.

Simples.

Hogg and Harman* suggest that it is unfair to apply new rules retrospectively. Legg hasn't created any 'new' rule. He has set out how the existing rules should have been applied. The House of Lords do this all the time.

I think MPs should be allowed to appeal but must provide a detailed written explanation, to the House and the public, of why each expense was “wholly, exclusively and necessarily ... for the purpose of performing their parliamentary duties". It would be fantastic reading.

From Times commenter K DH to Dominic Lawson @ October 18, 2009 9:48 AM BST

___________________

Both QCs, as is Sir Thos. Legg.

Give me confrontational politics every time

Confrontation is the essence of healthy political debate and a whole lot better than the alternative: party bosses stitching everything up between them for their own political advantage: to keep themselves high on the hog and the electorate in their place.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity – GBS, The Doctor’s Dilemma

And none more so than politics, where an unemployable seeker of lucrative sinecures, unburdened by principle or conscience,

... may seek to conceal himself among men of principle dedicated to the common weal. (The masculine embraces the feminine. Quite often, actually, in political circles.)

p>

If he's nothing else (and he is nothing else) Nick Clegg, the sometime Deep Green, temporarily Blue (he denies it) ski instructor, journo for five minutes and ever afterwards dedicated tranzi first class, is certainly a pro among international take-anyone's-shilling politicians. The archetype of LibDemmery, in fact.

LibDems are notorious for saying whatever they think they ought to say to please each ad hoc audience and to hell with having said the opposite to a different audience, probably in the adjacent constituency, yesterday.

As long as they see a chance of getting their grubby hands on a little piece of whatever power is going... Westminster, EU, change the voting system to get it, whatever... the LibDems are in favour of it. The principle-free political party.

Apparently vanilla, portraying themselves as the Quakers (sorry, Friends) of British politics, nice to everyone (of course), pro-motherhood, pro-apple pie and 'A vote for us is a vote against Horrid People', the LibDems are in fact, as anyone will tell you who has come up against them in election campaigns, the most unscrupulous, dishonest, calculating, lying, vicious, character-assassin, shape-shifter hypocrites on the modern British political landscape.

Which is why Clegg's latest crap is so very predictable.

Complain to the Advertising Standards Authority

About this.

Here's the complaint form.

Here's what I wrote to the ASA.

This advertisement is designed to prejudice an impressionable young audience against dispassionate discussion of scientific fact and is therefore inimical to education.

It is gratuitously alarming. It deliberately targets children who are likely to be frightened.

It presents as established fact a distorted view of heavily disputed scientific information.

It amounts to propaganda for a particular political point of view.

Please do not use precisely this form of words or the ASA is likely to discount your complaint (and mine) as part of a co-ordinated write-in campaign - although personally I see nothing wrong with organising against an outrage.

Sign this petition, please - and post to your blog

The mighty Steve Green asks for help with his petition.

He wants to stop our children being frightened with lies like this.

Please sign the petition.

If you tweet, please RT http://twitter.com/Daily_Ref

I'lll see you in court, Legg! Er...

... maybe.

Then again, maybe not, according to this chap. He thinks it's all ill-advised sabre-rattling.

Maybe Carter-Ruck will advise the Hon and Rt Hon Ladies and Gents to do as I suggested. Pay up and shut up.

Political betting

A piece on CoffeeHouse with which I entirely agree, about the intellectual depth and importance of the CamerOsborne offering.

I have though for some time now that, if the British people have the imagination to understand and elect him, Cameron may prove to be as historically important in the evolving politics of the United Kingdom as Pitt or Peel.

I would put a large bet on it but by the time the heirs of that nice Mr Hill decide to pay me out I shall be too dead to pick up my winnings.

Phoney polyphony

English people returning home from a visit Down Under often find themselves unable to shake off one of their souvenirs: the rising interrogative tone at the end of a sentence.

It's a jolly good laugh for their friends at first, until they decide that it's an irritating poncey affectation. It isn't. It happens to most people and the more musical one’s ear the more rapidly one’s speech changes colour to match those of one’s aural surroundings.

After a period of re-settlement among their fellow-countrymen, usually about three weeks, the victim loses his faux-Ocker under the same attrition affect, this time of his native speech-music.

I say ‘his', the masculine not embracing the feminine, but in fact one notices this adoption of an exotic inflection more often among women. Perhaps it is because females have developed to a superior degree the literally vital ability to interpret the purely tonal signals of pre-lingual infants. Hence, too, women's discovery of the therapeutic affect on stressed babies of singing to them. Most men would not think of that.

There are other 'musical' habits of speech which are even more annoying and even more infectious than sounding like an Australian when in fact one comes from Steeple Bumpstead.

One of our neighbours, a woman with a normal alto voice, has the annoying habit of raising her voice three octaves on the sung-not-spoken word 'bye'. Or 'bye-bye'. Or even, gawdelpus, 'byee'. She seems to be infecting every female with whom she comes into contact with her annoying mannerism.

She is a sociable woman with a lot of female friends who call upon her in a continuous convivial stream when her husband is at work. One glimpses how Jane Austen’s social circles might have operated.

The arrival rituals are of the common or garden variety. The departure rituals, though, are frankly bizarre.

They involve a high-pitched fugue on the word ‘Bye!’

Proceedings commence with a simple high-soprano ‘Bye!’ from the party of the first part followed by (in the same tessitura if not at precisely the same pitch) a single ‘Bye!’ in response. Then the party of the first part offers a ‘Bye-bye!’ which is echoed by the party of the second part but with – and here is where the trouble starts – her first ‘Bye-’ overlapping with the second ‘-bye!’ from the party of the first part. At this point, one is hoping that the duet will end with a second ‘bye!’ from the party of the first part, but no.

Not to be outdone and keen to have the final word, the party of the second part, having anticipated the reprise of the party of the first part which we have just heard, instantly ripostes with her own second da capo ‘Bye-bye!’ of which her first syllable overlaps with the second ‘bye!’ from her opponent. The party of the first part returns fire with a da capo single ‘Bye!’ of her own.

We have now heard the last of the double bye-byes. From here on, the battle escalates rapidly, the weapon of each contender being the single, determined ‘Bye!’ but – and this is critical – each utterance commencing just before the last ‘Bye!’ from the opponent has died away. And thus we continue until the slam of the car door brings the curtain down on the whole Baroque performance.

I have counted as many as twelve contributions from each competitor, all with operatic projection, lacking only innate musicality and a little voice-coaching.

I leave to your imagination the cacophony the neighbourhood must endure when there are three or more women departing after one of her coffee-mornings.

Reincarnation

I thought he was dead but today Ali Bongo was sworn in as the President of Gabon!

And that's magic!

The lawyer is an ass

In the matter of superinjunctions, Trafigura, Carter-Ruck, etc., I posted a comment over at the Wardman Wire. It awaits moderation. Here it is:

Would you care to consider whether, in granting an injunction which it is clear in advance will have implications for the reporting of Parliament, the judge ought urgently and as a matter of course to notify* the Parliamentary authorities and specifically the Speaker who is, after all, a legal officer in a particular sense, whose own ruling in the matter of public reporting would be germane to the very effectiveness of the injunction.

Mr Speaker ought, surely, to have all the information he needs in order to protect both the citizen legitimately needing the protection of the court and the right of the Commons to examine related matters whether in camera (it does happen) or otherwise.

It is Mr Speaker’s job to prevent mischief making by malevolent or axe-grinding individual MPs, as you suggest. In certain circumstances, as you obviously also envisage, he will need all the help he can get, including notice from the courts of any oncoming trains.

_____________

*Notify, not consult qua consult. That would bring into uncomfortable proximity the legislature and the judiciary.

The author over at TWW makes the point obliquely, and it has been made elsewhere, that those involved in the application for injunction may not have anticipated that it would have implications for the relationship between Parliament and people. In my view, they should have thought about it. These are the world's smartest legal brains with vast collective experience.

Am I losing my grip?

Nothing has made me angry today.

Oh - wait... news coming through...

Seems Carter-Ruck have a death wish. They taken it upon themselves to instruct the Speaker of the House of Commons as to what he may and may not permit the elected representatives of the people to discuss in the High Court of Parliament. Ye-es... good luck with that, Mr Fuck.

Well, that's all right then. For a moment there I thought it was me.

High Court Gives Mr Justice Eady a Good Kicking

Nick Cohen is having trouble keeping a straight face. I am not even trying.

And another

Another pundit catches up with Prodicus. They all do, in time.

Thus Steltzer:

Consider, for example, generosity of spirit. In his speech, Cameron remarked that Labour's mistakes were "done with the best intentions", and, "Let's be clear: not everything Labour did was wrong". Can anyone imagine Gordon Brown making a similar concession to his opponents, either within or outside his party? This is not merely a matter of style. It determines whether a prime minister will be able to restore civility to arguments over which policies best serve the nation.

Aye, there's the rub, Simon

So Simon Heffer agrees with me, for once. Legg is not about fairness to MPs.

He enters the realm of fantasy with this, though:

A sterner moralist would have told some MPs that some of their claims, while legal, were immoral, and represented an immoral use of public money. For some of them were, and the public sees this; and expected better.

Absolutely, but would a sterner moralist even have been appointed? Or any species of moralist? What a quaint idea.

To throw the words 'moral' or 'immoral' at our legislators would merely baffle most of them for they do not understand such concepts. Nay, they expressly reject them. The few who are comfortable with such ideas are well-known religious fanatics, possibly closet fascists.

No, the approved forms (especially, as it happens, in schools, which is where this problem is seeded and nurtured, a key long-range strategy of the Left) are 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable'. In other words, what the majority will allow you to get away with if they even they know about it. A conveniently morality-free approach to public, er, morality and its converse - public corruption.

'Right', 'wrong', 'moral' and 'immoral' are discredited archaic absolutes by which only proles - you and me - live their lives these days. But only us, and only until the brainwashing process is complete. Not Them.

They, the enlightened ones, our masters, who believe they have the right to engineer our society (they think) into attitudes and practices which conform to their own ideologies and the dictates of their own household gods, reject such terms as regressive. Authoritarian. Judgemental. Not inclusive. So... yesterday.

And these are the same whited sepulchres who are baying for the blood of BAe for 'immoral business practices'. Hahahahah...

Do not expect, Mr Heffer, Sir Thomas, our rulers to understand you if you should resort to the language of morality which, nowadays, only the recalcitrant, the salt of the earth, we with our feet on the ground, so to speak, still understand.

Meanwhile, the heavy boots of the party leaders are being laid to the necks of their rank and file. But has any of them, even the grotesquely opportunistic Nick Clegg, used the words 'wrong' or 'immoral'? Of course not! Why would they, when all 'value judgements' are, um, unacceptable?

They are crowding around microphones to declare the 'old system' unacceptable, and occasionally to agree that the behaviour of an individual troughing MP is unacceptable. But 'wrong'? I must have missed that.

The urgent concern of all those hoping for power or at least to remain on the green benches for a few more years, is to palliate the rage of the electorate before the general election. That is all. They'll pay up if they have to in order to do so, but not because they are conscious of having behaved immorally. Merely to close the matter. Draw a line. Move on.

But to clean the stables? No, because the first prerequisite for that, in the long term, would be the hosing out of Marxist relativism from our public discourse, everywhere from Parliament to primary school. Do not hold your breath. It is not going to happen. That ship sailed long ago.

We will not hear any MP condemn the immoral behaviour of another. Witness the defence of the judgement by her peers of the egregious immorality (to us, out here in the world) of the former Home Secretary such as we heard last night from the kindly and virtuous Sir George Young and this morning from the calculating Ms Harman.

Sir George expressed understanding of 'ameliorating circumstances' while Ms Harman declined to comment ad hominem in any way whatsoever, stonewalling against accusations of immorality and corruption. She simply repeated the agreed chant: 'Old System bad, New System good', being the proposed cure for the stinking Parliamentary corruption of which no-one in Parliament will speak but whose stench may choke the elector on his way to the polling booth.

And that polling booth is the focus of our MPs attention. Not morality. Please - let's keep it, as Dave says, real.

Realpolitik for cowards and confidence tricksters

This Legg business is a constitutional outrage says Iain Martin and he is quite right. It is.

Ah, me... MPs are squealing: 'Injustice!'

Right Honourable and Honourable Ladies and Gentlemen, I have my fingers in my ears.

This is summary justice, rough justice, and some of you think you are being penalised unfairly.

Not my problem. After all, it is happening because you willed it.

You hired Sir Thomas. You gave him carte blanche in the hope that he would play by your time-honoured rules but he has chosen not to do so. He has chosen, instead, to do what you, yourselves, should have done years ago.

Very well, then. Let us speak of justice and injustice.

Where was justice in the confidence tricks perpetrated against me over many years by so many Members of Parliament, until you were found out?

For years, you and your colleagues treated me unfairly. All of you, Rt Hon. and Hon. colleagues in the House of Commons in which you all have equal responsibility for the actions - and inactions - of the House. Was this justice?

Those of you not personally guilty of abusing my trust and your position by taking money from me to which you were not entitled, are accessories to the offences of those who did.

You, who committed no grave sins of commission, are guilty of grave sins of omission.

You did nothing to stop your fellow MP's from abusing me, a citizen who has so much less money and so many fewer privileges than you whom I and my fellows sent to Parliament to defend us from the overmighty and the wicked.

• You made me subsidise MPs' luxury to a grotesque degree, to my own impoverishment
• You abused my trust
• You debased my Parliament
• If you did not do these things personally you condoned them in others by your silence.

By your silence, or worse, you denied me justice. You did not care as long as I paid, and paid again and kept you and your colleagues in unwonted luxury. You perpetrated a vast confidence trick on me and my fellow citizens. You, the makers of the laws I must obey in the name of justice, denied me justice.

The boot is now on the other foot. You are crying 'Injustice!' - and I do not care.

You are in the stocks. You, so used to the silken privileges of the powerful, are receiving rough justice on behalf of millions of angry and abused citizens.

Too few of you realise that you have brought this upon yourselves by your actions, by your inaction or by your silence. And that you all - ALL - have some way to go to make amends.

So in place of justice (as I freely admit) we are now having retribution instead. Crude, isn't it? Forgive me if on this occasion I take a less than sophisticated attitude, or even smile at your discomfort. I'm only human.

Pay up. Shut up.

Then reflect upon what you have done to our Parliament by, at the very least neglecting your responsibility over the long term, and in the short term by placing an unelected official in authority over yourselves who should have remained sovereign as the House of Commons - and discharged your responsibilities.

You are cowards. You panicked. Our disreputable, despicable Prime Minister - a notorious proven coward - panicked in the face of public outrage and like sheep you allowed him to lead you into yet further disaster.

You agreed that Mr Brown, on your behalf, should hire Sir Thomas Legg to do to you what you should have done but failed to do for yourselves.

Live with it.

You get no pity from me.

Says it all...

... really.

Image from ToryBear, h/t Guido.

The Force is against C-R

http://twitpic.com/ld2vo

Fertiliser stock: BUY

If you're a Tweeter, get yourself a FreeTheGuardian #Twibbon. Even if you despise the Grauniad (as I do) this is just not funny.

Rubber gloves and face-masks on, freedom-lovers. It's time to unite with the fucking moonbats to fertilise a certain law firm's turf.

Mr Speaker, this could be your finest hour

Step forward and do your job, Mr Speaker Bercow.

Let the House of Commons assert itself against overmighty Persons and their lackeys lawyers who would overturn the people's constitutional right to discuss our Parliament's proceedings.

Nozzles

This is not going to happen. Too inconvenient for too many bandwagonners.

Nathan Myhrvold (described by Bill Gates as "the smartest person I know") comes up with a plan almost appalling in its simplicity.

Myrhvold begins with the uncontroversial observation that the biggest sudden natural cooling events are eruptions from "big ass" volcanoes, which shoot vast quantities of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, which in turn leads to a decrease in ozone and a diffusing of sunlight, followed by a sustained drop in global temperatures. Why not bring about the same effect through engineering, asks Myhrvold. Thus he has designed a system of pumps, attached to gigantic hoses, which would be taken up into the atmosphere in helium balloons; they would then spray colourless liquid sulphur dioxide which would wrap around the North and South poles in less than a fortnight. Myhrvold estimates that this "save the poles" programme would cost roughly $20m, with an annual operating cost of $10m. Job done.

Alternatively, there is the British Government's suggestion that we spend $1.2 trillion a year globally on a decarbonisation programme. The trouble with this is that even if the British are happy to pay massively more for their electricity by foregoing coal – the world's most plentiful and cheap form of stored energy – the vastly bigger and growing economies of China and India have no intention of denying their people the life-changing benefits of cheap electrification.

You would think that the sort of innovative plan outlined in Superfreakonomics would be welcomed by leaders across the globe, with Nobel prizes in the offing for Myhrvold and his colleagues. You would be wrong. For the modern generation of politicians like to talk grandiloquently about the "war" against climate change (just as they do about the "war against terror" and the "war against drugs"): but there's no glory to be had in spending $10m a year on giant nozzles squirting sulphur dioxide around the poles. For that you need very little by way of international summits, or press conferences to the world's media.

Worse still from their point of view, such a solution would mean that they would be doing absolutely nothing to change the way we lead our lives. We would carry on going about our lives just as we are; and if politicians are doing nothing to change our behaviour they will feel bereft, devoid of mission, even (perish the thought) redundant.

Their fury at such redundancy would be shared by the conventional environmental movement, which regards any solution involving geo-engineering as an "offence against nature" and therefore axiomatically wicked – as if "nature" had the capacity to give a damn one way or the other.

Dominic Lawson.

Our Masters prefer this sort of thing.

Get down with the kids

From here.

Most-read Guardian story today

Never thought I would be promoting the Grauniad. Needs must when the Devil drives.

Carter-Ruck (?) stops Guardian reporting Parliament

WTF ?

When do we start marching?

_________________________

The questions on today's Order Paper are all to Ed Balls.

Update: ignore that. The question will be one of these - thanks to Jimmy at Guido's:

Update: ructions at Guido's.

Update: check this Tweeter Update: Turns out he's a twat who posted one useful thing.

Update: the very fine defender of Parliamentary democracy and freedom @Morus1516 has got #trafigura trending on Twitter overnight.

Update: I wonder how long this will remain up:

Dirty money

So 'Lord' Swraj Paul wants himself investigated.

Good call, Your Thieving Lordship. Get your defence in before the heavies arrive, as they will, to go over you with a fine-tooth comb. It won't make any difference. You are political toast. Burnt toast. You know, the sort that gets all over your fingers and clothes if you even touch it. Kinda like pitch.

This thieving billionaire bastard has promised to bankroll Labour's election campaign.

Do you still want his tainted money, comrades? Do you? Do you?

Labour has gone one fucking outrageous step too fucking far

STOP FUCKING UP OUR CHILDREN'S MINDS, YOU LYING ECO-FASCIST CHILD-MOLESTING FUCKERS.

HOW DARE YOU FRIGHTEN OUR CHILDREN WITH YOUR FUCKING LIES.

JUST FUCK OFF OUT OF OUR LIVES, YOU TWISTED FUCKING MORAL BANKRUPTS.

FUCK YOU.

Oh, yes. We are going to do just that. We are going to fuck you. Fuck you out of existence as a political party. Just wait.

_________________________

THE EARTH IS COOLING.

It's coming back!

Inconvenient truth: "Earth cooling" says BBC

Now this is really quite amusing.

The climate change correspondent of BBC News has admitted that global warming stopped in 1998 – and he reports that leading scientists believe that the earth’s cooling-off may last for decades.

Damian Thompson

Sweet and sour

It was noticeable at the Tory Conference that David Cameron and other Shadow Cabinet members peppered their criticisms of Labour policies with the attribution to their Labour opponents of 'the best of intentions' even as they asserted that Labour's policies are mistaken and have proved damaging to the common weal.

Tory leaders said several times that 'not everything Labour has done was wrong' and 'much that Labour has done has been good'.

Cameron's jabbing rage in his closing speech was aimed, not at individual Labour persons as moral agents, but at the corporate body of the Labour Party for its settled policy (dictated by the leadership) ...

... of accusing 'the Conservatives' of heartlessness, wickedness, and selfish, insouciant disregard for the poor.

These unpleasant things are necessarily matters of personal morality; to accuse a group of moral turpitude is to accuse its members of it, to attribute personal moral evil to them.

This is not the cut and thrust of civilised political debate. This is atavistic, take-no-prisoners class warfare of the sort used by V I Lenin's cadres to bring down the Russian ruling class in the early years of the last century.

The conditioned reflex to reach for the hate-speech of full-on class warfare is in the most ancient traditions of the hard left from the time before they changed tack and opted for the Gramscian softly-spoken, 'long march' approach.

Under Labour's present leadership, openly-expressed hatred qua hatred of the 'epithet-deleted conservatives' has become, you might say, an integral element of Labour Party campaigning and a necessary qualification, along with the abandonment of one's dignity, for advancement within their 'great movement'. It used not to be the case: Attlee, Gaitskell, Blair... and there are exceptions: Darling, Field... Oh, but... Field is hated by his colleagues. Darling was to be fired. Oh, well.

The presumption that Conservatives are actually wicked explains the aversion to socialising with these Devil's Disciples which is a given among Labour's wholly virtuous aristocrats and high priests up in their Hampstead temples of virtue and in their missionary stations out in Medialand.

"Of course one talks to a few Tories in the studio but one wouldn't invite them home for dinner..." (looking for the original reference)

The genuine incredulity in the voices of broadcast journalists at the spontaneous standing ovation from grass root Conservatives for Cameron's promise of help for the poor as a priority tells its own story. They really believe that the average Conservative is a bad person. Even so they are thunderstruck at current developments and can only conclude, cynically, that this is some sort of strictly temporary conversion for electoral purposes only.

By contrast, to accuse a political group of damaging economic or philosophical errors made with good intentions is very far indeed from attributing personal moral evil to the group's members, even if the consequences of their policies are proven in practice to have been tragically damaging to the vulnerable and needy.

The Tory shadow government is making no accusations of personal moral evil about the Labour Party, merely criticisms of its - and its leaders' - egregious philosophical and economic errors.

The Labour Party is now so philosophically and politically (I omit words like 'economically' and 'financially') bankrupt that it cannot summon the energy for civilised economic and political debate. It has decided that it does not even wish to, reverting instead to the less demanding option of atavistic hate-speech against individuals and groups of individuals. I wonder how much longer it will be before its more stupid supporters decide to start actually flinging stones.

Unless, of course, I have missed something. It may be that there have been many similarly courteous public critiques of Conservative Party policy by Labour ministers in the long years and many campaigns since 1997. If so, do let me know where I can find them.

I would be particularly interested in finding any generous tributes by Mr Brown to Mr Cameron's 'good intentions'.

On a more cynical note, I wonder which stance - sweet or sour - will attract more swing votes in marginal constituencies?

My own best bellwether

This may come across as either arrogant or mad. It is not meant to spook anyone.

My political instincts have hitherto proved more reliable than any politician's or pundit's. Sometimes there is a time lag but even so I always find myself in the advance guard of the regiment of political anoraks. I claim no virtue and no points for this. It's just a remarkable accident.

If I applaud heartily and respond positively, the electoral majority seems to do the same. It's really quite spooky.

The reverse is not always true.

I don't make electoral predictions on this blog. Well, all right, I do, of course, because that's part of the fun of blogging. But no, not really. Not seriously. I claim no mystical powers!

I do, though, sense a massive, as yet inchoate movement towards the Tories (as opposed to away from Labour) which has yet to be calibrated by the psephologists and pollsters. I am quite confident, or should I say quietly confident, that this judgement is correct.

Nope, I cannot justify this or provide evidence of a pattern. It's just what I have seen over many years. I just feel electoral sea-changes in, as my grandfather would have said, my water. And my watery predictions have never, ever been wrong. Then again, there's always a first time, as my grandmother would retort.

I didn't vote for Blair (perish the...) but I absolutely knew a huge majority would, long before the pundits said so. That his personal attractiveness and powers of persuasion would get him into Downing Street, once he decided to go for it, was blindingly obvious. My fundamental differences with him, he being a Labour politician, were irreconcilable, but I could well see how a floating voter, not shackled by my philosophy, would buy whatever the silky, clever bugger was selling.

I see Cameron's victory as a similarly foregone conclusion.

Cameron's personal attractiveness, his powers of persuasion and - here's the difference - his sound philosophical grounding within his Party's traditions (i.e. he is kicking at an open door with his Party* as Blair very definitely was not) will enable the Conservative Party to change the electoral map.

_________________________

* Maybe you would have to be a Tory to understand this. It will sound incredible to Labour ears which is why the overwhelmingly left-leaning media do not 'get' what truly happened this week at the Manchester Conference. Yes, this is how Tories think. It is not new to us - only to the media.

Softlee, softlee, catchee monkey

Cameron and Osborne took the gamble of a lifetime this week, both with their own political careers - especially Osborne - and with the Conservative Party’s electoral chances.

That the Tories have not lost a point in the polls but gained the usual boost is a political achievement of seismic proportions. Consider it a subterranean earthquake whose effects have not yet reached the surface - but will.

This is the start of a long campaign, not its climax.

If a week is along time in politics, and crossing one’s fingers for no terrible ‘events’ between now and then, the likelihood remains of a simply colossal Tory victory in May.

Who?

Can you really imagine Nicolas Sarkozy being willing to share the international limelight with our Tony, when Blair is British, charismatic, and not remotely frightened of appearing in photocalls with people of more than five foot five inches in height? No, I will wager a fiver with any reader – proceeds to charity – that Blair will not be chosen as Europe's president, if and when the Treaty of Lisbon proceeds.

The job will go Buggins-style to some relatively inoffensive Luxembourg socialist or superannuated Finnish environment minister. At which point, of course, the question is posed with even more force. Who is this person? Who elected them? By what right will he or she be purporting to speak for us in the UK?

Thus Boris

Conference tip

Don't speak to Polly Toynbee at an early morning fringe meeting before she's had her coffee and Danish. Not sparkly company.

That lipsmacking 17 point lead

Yup.

To that nervous young man in Manchester who didn't believe me when I assured him it would happen: Told you so.

Someone tell the Pope to get with the programme

Why is Benedict XVI delaying Obama's canonisation?

Leadership and the lack of it

A signal difference between Brown and Cameron is that Cameron is a leader and Brown is not. Nations like leaders.

Brown is not a political leader. He is a bullying, micro-managing Party boss who mistrusts, insults and diminishes his senior colleagues by making all the key decisions and public announcements which are properly theirs. This is not leadership.

He tries to impress the electorate by having an answer to every question himself which should properly be addressed to one of his cabinet colleagues. This is not leadership.

He is concerned above all with Party advantage, at the expense of the national interest. This is not leadership.

Incredible it may be but during the first entire year of the economic crisis Brown did not meet once with the First Minister of Scotland. This is not leadership but a wholly Party positioning decision - and political cowardice. By contrast, Cameron will go to Scotland in his first week as PM if he wins the election.

He has not had the courage to offer himself to the electorate as a candidate for either his Party's or the national leadership.

Brown rules with a small team of cowed but thuggish capi. He retains his party position not by exercising leadership but by the mafia politics of Glasgow. He could not tolerate Cabinet government. Therefore if Brown falls, his government falls.

Labour is not fit to survive as a Party or as a government because it has failed to ward off this danger.

If Labour cannot be trusted to safeguard their own fate they are not to be trusted with the fate of the country. Miliband, Harman, Straw, Cruddas... all of them deserve nothing more than history's (and the Labour Party's) dustbin.

Brown has lost his political intelligence, if he ever really had any. Tony Blair, who has, would appear to think not. Brown believes that his undoubted intellectual power and memory for detail will prove the key to winning votes through TV debates. This is a fatal political error but one to be expected in a man of such insensitivity to how other people think, and how he himself is seen by the electorate.

People do not vote for intelligence but for a person. They will choose a man they like and trust. Brown has made himself intensely disliked and he is no longer trusted. Therefore he cannot win elections outside the Glasgow Labour Mafia Belt. Fatally, the public has lately seen The Glare for itself. It is not a good look on a Prime Minister.

The electorate has grown accustomed, since 1997 (a long time in politics), to the Blair/Brown style of Prime Minister: President Blair with his Divan, his Sofa Court, and Chancellor/PM Brown with his omni-expertise and autocracy.

In the starkest of contrast, this week in Manchester we saw a Prime Minister. A national leader. A man who does not claim to have the detailed answers to every possible question but who sets objectives and the direction of travel and gives his reasons for both. A man who says, 'I will go this way. Follow me.'

That is leadership.

And as Cameron declared, 'It does not matter where a leader comes from. 'It is character and judgement that count'. Indeed.

Eton? Pah. Thatcher was no toff although she acted like one (and it grated in its falsity). She was, however, an undoubted leader. She set the tone, the direction, wityh precious few details, and people said, yes, we'll follow you. And then she put taxes up. And still people followed her. That was leadership.

Similarly, Blair was a political leader. Disregarding detail, he simply said to the electorate, 'Follow me', and they did. Three times.

If Blair had had a man who understood leadership at his right hand, rather than an arrogant, micro-managing bully, history might have been very different... Labour should look to the Glasgow Labour Party and ask it some searching questions. It is to blame for a large part of Labour's present and impending sickness.

It does not matter where you come from. No, but on the other hand it was no surprise to me to learn that three of the last four commanders of the SAS went to Cameron's old school and that the fourth got the job only after narrowly beating another man who who did.

If you want a thug, you can get one at any Glasgow street corner. If you want a micro-manager, a Gordon Brown will do. When leadership is vital, as with the SAS and the present state of Britain, get a bloody leader.

Am I thinking what William Hague's thinking?

I was in the hall for Cameron's speech and for the first time I began to think he may turn out to be not just good but historically great.

Labour doesn't 'do' history, does it, despite having a PhD historian as its, er, 'leader'? If they did, they'd be scared stiff

Cameron's modernisation process has more than once reminded me of Peel. Yesterday, Pitt the Younger crossed my mind. Perhaps that's the idea. As the much-mocked Wikipedia puts it, and as I remember from my grammar school where history was taught:

George III dismissed the coalition government and finally entrusted the premiership to William Pitt, after having offered the position to him three times previously. Pitt, at the age of twenty-four, became Great Britain's youngest Prime Minister ever and was ridiculed for his youth.

A popular ditty commented that it was "a sight to make all nations stand and stare: a kingdom trusted to a schoolboy's care".

Many saw it simply as a stop-gap appointment until some more senior statesman took on the role. However, although it was widely predicted that the new "mince-pie administration" would not last out the Christmas season, it survived for seventeen years.

The new Government was immediately on the defensive and in January 1784 was defeated on a Motion of No Confidence.

Pitt, however, took the unprecedented step of refusing to resign, despite this defeat. He retained the support of the King, who would not entrust the reigns of power to the Fox-North Coalition.

He also received the support of the House of Lords, which passed supportive motions, and many messages of support from the country at large, in the form of petitions approving of his appointment which influenced some Members to switch their support to Pitt.

At the same time, he was granted the Freedom of the City of London. When he returned from the ceremony to mark this, men of the City pulled Pitt's coach home themselves, as a sign of respect.

When passing a Whig club, the coach came under attack from a group of men who tried to assault Pitt. When news of this spread, it was assumed that Fox and his associates had tried to bring down Pitt by any means.

Pitt gained great popularity with the public at large as "Honest Billy" who was seen as a refreshing change from the dishonesty, corruption and lack of principles widely associated with both Fox and North.

Yes, David, it's going to get very personal. It's the only shot in Labour's locker, now, after all.

If they think Cameron is a fake, in any respect, or that the electorate cares more about toffery than honesty, then frankly Labour has entirely lost its political mind and not only will it lose but it cannot even hope to survive.

The Conference Fringe was illuminating; I shall long remember some substantial dialogue between Tories and serious left-ish thinkers (Demos, IPPR) who know change when they see it happening and recognise honesty in political thinking which, although expressing a different philosophical tradition from theirs, palpably has the public good as its aim. Some of their people shame the Labour Party.

Peter Oborne remarked that 'the profoundest change' has already taken place in British politics, with the Conservative party being regarded as a responsible government and the Labour Party as an opposition.

If Oborne is right, as I hope he is, I wonder how long it will be before the media grasp that fact, rather than continuing to make complete arses of themselves. I am not holding my breath for any Damascene conversions in Broadcasting House.

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