No more cream for pussy



The Economist has, as its final leader, Now for the hard part, a pertinent peroration on the Northern Irish settlement (here, but subscription required):

The next step to a normal Northern Ireland

Over the 40 years of the troubles, the place has become a subsidy junkie that receives from Westminster £5 billion ($10 billion) more than is raised locally by taxation. More than a third of the 770,000 people in jobs are directly employed by the public sector (which accounts for nearly two-thirds of economic output), while half a million are officially classed as inactive. Part of the problem is the scarcity of private-sector investment, which is crowded out both by the omnipresent state and the large black economy that "peaceful' paramilitaries on both sides of the religious divide hold sway over.

Gordon Brown, as chancellor now and prime minister when Mr Blair goes, will be under pressure to keep the subsidy taps gushing. But what Northern Ireland needs now is a home-grown economic miracle of the kind achieved in the south. Easier said than done, but then getting Mr Paisley and Mr Adams to work together wasn't easy either.

Malcolm has been niggling around this topic for a long while; and he confidently predicts it will continue to occupy his thoughts and those of the great and the good. Once upon a time, Harold Wilson voiced a complaint similar to that of the Economist. Here's a nicely-done bit by Eoghan Mac Cormaic in An Phoblacht, rootling in his treasure-chest of political souvenirs:

The first spontaneous symbol in my box was invented by Ian Paisley. Back in 1974, at the time of the UWC strike, Harold Wilson had gone on TV to accuse Unionists and Loyalists of being spongers on the British Taxpayer. The Supreme Sponge was, naturally enough, irate and duly appeared on TV the next day with a piece of sponge in his buttonhole. Many unionists followed his example and for weeks we had the unsightly spectacle of unionism parading about with its brains pinned to the lapels of its coat. It wasn't a great campaign: the design features didn't lend themselves well to the grey skies of the Six Counties. One good shower and the sponge-soaked lapel of Unionism was sagging to its waist. Another heroic failure in the badge department, and another addition to my biscuit tin.

That resonates with Malcolm because he defended Wilson to a Unionist. It took thirty-odd years for Malcolm to learn that, as a result, this had caused a rift, and Malcolm and his inamorata were "not being spoken to".

"Closure?"

In the same Slugger O'Toole thread that Malcolm mentioned in his previous posting, "Watchman" objected to Malcolm use of the term "closure":

It’s a good idea to play the ball not the man. However, in Hain’s case, his actions are so closely related to personality, it’s hard not to break the rule. For what it’s worth, Heffer sums Hain up very well.

“Closure”? I don’t think so. This particular game has a long time to run yet.

To which Malcolm replies, yes “closure”.

Feeling tiggerish

Malcolm, though, wants to stick with the Economist, particularly the punch-line:

what Northern Ireland needs now is a home-grown economic miracle of the kind achieved in the south.

Set that up alongside how Diarmaid Ferriter defines the "Celtic Tiger":

It is still jolting to read the opening line of one of the books that sought to explain what became known as the 'Celtic Tiger': 'Ireland has had the fastest growing economy in the world in the last years of the twentieth century' [129]. After decades of under-development and stagnation, 'Ireland' had become rich ...

External observers were capable of marvelling at and praising the wealth creation, but were also stinging in their end-of-century rebuke of misplaced priorities. A human-development report of the United Nations Development Programme, based on data collected in 1997, and published in 2002, observed that Ireland had the highest level of poverty in the Western world outside the United States and was one one of the most unequal among Western countries, with the richest 10 per cent of the population 11 times wealthier than the poorest 10 per cent ... It was estimated that 15.3 per cent of Irish people were living in poverty, largely caused by the fact that 23 per cent of the population was functionally illiterate. [131]

Those footnotes in the original are:

[129] Paul Sweeney, The Celtic Tiger: Ireland's Economic Miracle Explained (Dublin, 1998), p.1

[131] Irish Times, 24 July 2002.

Eyes on the ball, chaps

What the Economist is saying, and what we shall hear with increasing volume for the future, is that the mainlanders have paid the course-fees for all, picked up the ball, packed their kit, and are off to R&R. The irredentists may feel, in Slugger's metaphor, their game has “a long time to run yet”, but it’s going to be solitaire.

Read the runes. The BBC for London and the South-East ran a series of features on the cost of living in London. This was underlined by another of those pointless-but-for-the-PR “business" conventioners whinging about the differential Government expenditure on the Capital versus that on Scotland. And, of course, Northern Ireland is (to English eyes) even more costly than Scotland.

Plan B or C for Northern Ireland would now have to be harsher than water charges. While the Six Counties was gorged on subsidies, Westminster was prepared to devastate the coal-fields of the north of England; tens of thousands lost jobs in the privatised industries; the iron works went; ancillaries in health, social care and local government were sold into low-pay and minimal benefits in the private service sector. How many cars come out of Coventry and Longbridge? What happened to ship-building? What remained for too many skilled men and women were MacJobs, Tesco shelf-stuffing, call-centre broiler-houses.

This is the formula to create a "tiger" economy: wealth is concentrated: the city-slickers get their annual mega-bonuses; the rich get their multimillion-pound houses in the suburbs. Once they've got them, they’re going to keep them. It's the rich what gets the gravy; it's the poor what gets screwed.

Times are gettin' hard, boy

Let’s assume that the Tory-ultras (like Heffer) really get up a head of steam. Their issue, above all, is tax-cuts: witness a fringe debate on 2nd October 2006, with Heffer and Norman Tebbit going against official Tory policy and winning a vote 60-40 that "The Conservative Party should make tax cuts a priority at the next general election."

Reckon they’ll find money in the kitty for bailing out the North again? Particularly if (when) the SNP make it easy for them by unpicking the Union.

Let’s change the metaphor.

The Brits have posted back the ring. The North is getting Gordon's billion, plus a sub from Dublin. That’s the divorce settlement, like it or not. Now newly-single, Ms Northern Ireland needs to stop waving, avoid drowning, and build a new life.

Forthcoming attractions

That's why the really interesting nominations in the N.I. Assembly "cabinet" will not be who gets education and social welfare. Those will probably be the SF prime picks because the soft spending buys cred with their electorate. (Expect Malcolm to come back to the grammar schools issue in due course.)

Instead, Malcolm will be watching who gets the economic briefs. That's going to be where the hard choices will have to be made; and Malcolm expects these to be retained by the upholders of the "Protestant work ethic".

So there is instant scope for conflict: spenders versus savers; consumers versus creators. The up-side of this is the faint possibility of a cross-community two-party system evolving.

But that, perhaps, is too much to hope for.

Sphere: Related Content

An arse by any other name

The magnificent Slugger O'Toole site, of which Malcolm is an assiduous reader and occasional, ignorant and ignored commentator, inevitably chewed over Simon Heffer's attack on Peter Hain.

Malcolm had a nibble on Thursday.

Slugger's essential thread was whether Heffer was applying coarse rugby's tried-and-tested tactic of playing the man rather than the ball. One correspondent, "Alex", concluded that Heffer is just an "arse". Delicate Anglian souls may not fully appreciate the wealth of meaning that the term has in its original Hiberno-Saxon.

Malcolm now recycles his view that Heffer is not just an arse, he is a pompous and flatulent one.

Item: Heffer's carefully trimmed wikipedia entry. Malcolm wagers that it needs as much attention as a Playboy Brazilian (sorry about that Metrosexual reference: it’s probably lost on good-living souls in God’s Own Province).

Item: And he’s a thieving git. He repeatedly claims and is cited as “the author of the phrase ‘Essex man’”. He nicked it from an October 1974 article by the political correspondent of the Financial Times. The term “Upminster Man” (geddit? Look up where Upminster is) appeared in the Pink ‘Un’s review of the Havering-Upminster line-up for the second ‘74 General Election. Not many people know that.

And, be brutally honest, Hain pulled it off. A dexterous use of carrot-and-stick by the Blair/Hain partnership achieved closure (see last Sunday’s Observer for a fair statement of where Malcolm stands). For the first time ever we’ve got the two gargoyles inside the tent pissing out (© LBJ). [By the way, nice cover on the latest Private Eye: the ruler-of-Malcolm's-heart says she’s going to frame it].

Back to the point, however. Tory Balubas (see footnote), inspired by the syphilitic Randolph Churchill, got us into this mess a century ago. The last thing we need is them dragging us back into la merde.

However, they do have just such a need, if only for short-term intra-party reasons.

As Malcolm has already maintained, Hefferlump should be read as part of the developing sally by the UKIPist/fogeyite faction on the traditional Tory right against the trimming, ducking and diving of the Cameroonies (see also Hitchens’ C4 prog on Monday). In other words, it has more to do with the London-Brussels axis than Westminster-Stormont.

That promised footnote:

By-the-by, sad to notice another useful metaphor seems to have slipped out of use. Back in 1960, on the first occasion Irish troops were deployed in a United Nations task-force. In February 1961 a group of Irish were ambushed and suffered fatalities. The bodies were returned to Ireland and there was a right shin-dig of a funeral procession down O'Connell Street.

Typical of Dublin humour, "Baluba" soon came to mean any troublemaker. The Press specifically applied it to the wild backwoodsmen of Fianna Fáil, who emerged from the lunatic undergrowth, complaining of any backsliding or failure to uphold the true republican ideal, at the Party's Ard Fheis.

Sphere: Related Content

Counting the St Andrews bawbees

I work all night,
I work all day, to pay the bills I have to pay.
Ain't it sad?
And still there never seems to be a single penny left for me.
That's too bad!
In my dreams I have a plan:
If I got me a wealthy man,
I wouldnt have to work at all,
I'd fool around and have a ball...

Fancy a three-day break beside the sea? You bet!

The Kingdom of Fife in breezy mid-October? Well ... suppose so.

Funny nobody this side of the water spotted the collateral cost of the The St Andrews Agreement (a.k.a Comhaontú Chill Rímhinn):

• Accommodation and room hire: £121,834.50;
• Transport: £85,755.86;
• Hiring the conference facilities and catering: £64,722.40;
• Catering for police providing the security: £27,966;
• Catering for the reptiles of the press: £7,506.13.

• Grand total of £391,783.

The .pdf of the details is available at the Northern Ireland Office. The original heads-up came from the BBC website.

Money, money, money -
Must be funny
In the rich man's world.
Money, money, money,
Always sunny
In the rich man's world.

Sphere: Related Content

Snakes in the grass?

Malcolm's mis-spent youth, touring the flea-pits of Dublin for the movies nobody else bothered with, tells him what to expect. There's always the threatening drums in the distance, the python slithering under the flap of the female talent's tent, the dusky face and blowpipe peeping out of the shrubbery. Standard back-lot B-movie stuff.

Well, here it comes again. There was Hitchens on Monday night (see previous posts). Simon Heffer diverting from his usual snipes at the Cameroonies to have a go at Hain (and, see below, this may be a surrogate target). Today, Thursday, the restlessness among the natives seems to have spread to The Times: as instanced by:

• Alongside the main leader, no less, Robert Crampton's Notebook.
• In the times2 section, Mary Ann Sieghart asking for Time for a truce in the class war over Cameron.

Let Malcolm chew over Heffer first.

Of his eight outings so far this month, Heffer used three as blatant attacks on Cameroonery:

• Why the Conservatives must stand up for the deserving rich.

This is ostensibly having a justified go at Vince Cable. Cable had said (and Malcolm feels it is quite a modest proposal):

One specific proposal we are investigating is an annual levy – say 1% - on residences worth over £1m: to be used for tax cuts for the less well-off.

In Heffer this became something far more bloodcurdling, a "monstrous suggestion".

Heffer let Cable off quite lightly, in a way that reveals more about Heffer than Cable:

Dr Cable is a man of erudition. He once had a proper job, as an oil industry economist. Not for him the legion vices of his fellow Lib Dems. The Member for Twickenham has no difficulties with the bottle, or with rent boys. You can tell at a glance that he would never brook such sexual practices as require a working knowledge of Attic Greek, or a multi-volume dictionary, to understand.

And that let-off is because Heffer now tracks onto his real target:

We expect no better of the Lib Dems, the hard-Left party in our politics since the dawn of Blairism. But we need to expect better of the Tories, who seem embarrassed by wealth - which is why they are, I fear, so reluctant to give any back to oppressed taxpayers, to spend as they see fit. The Victorians had a distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor. If it helps the Tories, let them have one now between the deserving and the undeserving rich. For it is the former, comprehensively, who stand to be bled white by Dr Cable, unless someone finds the guts to speak up against him.

Ah, yes. And so to exhibit 2:

• Another bandwagon for Dave to jump on.
  

Well, there's no difficulty in deciding where that's coming from, or going to:

The Tories are locked into a desperate pursuit of young people who, they are convinced, spend their waking hours worrying about the planet, hugging trees and bunnies, and recycling like mad. Maybe they do. But people with such a commitment are already entrenched voters for parties with a long record of environmental concern. It will take more than a tax on flights to Benidorm to make them vote for Dave. Meanwhile, those who might vote for him are being hectored and lectured about their behaviour and, should he come to power, warned they will have their pockets picked.

And the boot goes in again:

this stunt-driven approach to politics has become Dave's trademark. And, as he has shown this week, he pursues the style with utter recklessness, and a complete disregard for its consequences. No bandwagon can now roll past him without his jumping on it. That is why I fear the new furore about food will, if you can pardon the phrase, be meat and drink to him: any sign that the Left might want to come down hard on food waste will have Dave coming down even harder first. There are many issues that could lose him the next election, but I think he might unwittingly have hit on the daddy of them all.

Malcolm does not feel any of that deserves glossing, so let's move on to exhibit 3:

• Tories have been left floundering.
  

On the budget, Heffer feels:

The message is simple: the Tories are now the party of high taxation, Labour is the party that gives you tax cuts. And image, as "Dave" knows, is everything now. Oh dear.

Notice that: the Telegraph's premier columnist is dishing the Tories, and specifically:

The cosy cadre of Old Etonians around Mr Cameron [who have] been good at coming up with the odd slogan, and better at ensuring that his image prevails over anything so vulgar as a policy.

For anyone missing the point, Heffer names the guilty:

As David Cameron and George Osborne banged on for months with their silly little catchphrase about "sharing the proceeds of growth", we could all see the hostage to fortune. A tax cut by Mr Brown, even one with more downright prestidigitation than would normally be found at a convention of the Magic Circle, would make the Tories look incredibly dumb. And, lo, it came to pass.

And, now today's contribution, as promised:

• If we don't protest loudly we deserve leaders like Peter Hain.

Surely, this is straightforward Labour-bashing? Well, says Malcolm, not quite: look at the major premise:

There has been so much lying, jobbery, sleaze, depravity, deceit, impropriety and failure (moral and political) that few of us have the energy to express what we might feel about further episodes of it.

Malcolm reads Heffer intending that as a general, not a partisan point. The minor thesis is:

If you seek the personification of this repellent political climate, you need look no further than the Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Hain. It could have been predicted from, as it were, his earliest youth that Mr Hain would turn out as he has. He began life as a semi-professional student agitator. For 15 years he worked for a trade union. Always greasily ambitious, he rose to the top of the Young Liberals. Not being a stupid man (contrary to the impression he quite consistently gives), he then deserted them for the Labour Party, and 16 years ago was elected an MP.

Hold on, says Malcolm. Let's do some textual analysis on that. Does this remind one of someone else, who oozed his way through party and other patronage, worked in PR, is obviously "greasily ambitious", has a flexible lack of principles, and is a "come-lately" to his chosen party, someone who:

is big on sustainable communities and all environmental concerns.

And Heffer's punch-line is Miliband for PM, a nagging thread in the Telegraph of late:

David Miliband is becoming the candidate the Tories least want. If, by some miracle, Labour were to elect him, it would recover much of the territory ceded to David Cameron. Voters warm to Mr Cameron's charm, impatience with ideology, working wife and young family. They contrast him with gloomy Gordon Brown, who presents his last Budget on Wednesday (and who has developed an unnerving habit of smiling at every fifth word). Stretch Mr Cameron out alongside Mr Miliband, however, and these advantages disappear. Mr Miliband is the same age as the Tory leader. He, too, has an independent wife and a young child. And he is undogmatic: witness his desire to tackle climate change by extending markets.

Any chance that leader came from the fine italic hand of "associate editor" S. Heffer?

After that, today's Times seems tamer stuff...

Crampton, for no obvious reason, retreads old territory: Tackle a hoody—like Dave doesn't.

Crampton's point is the difference between what Cameron has said about interacting with hoodys/hoodies (choose your own variation) and what he does:

He has not, I think, personally confronted anyone over their bad behaviour, because bluntly he is too frightened.

Although Crampton keeps the tone light, the implication is heavy:

No doubt there are many things to be done at the national, local and neighbourhood level (although Blair has given many of them a go already) but in terms of individuals acting rather than not acting, which is what Cameron is exhorting us to do, then, unless it’s just more hot air, ultimately he, me and lots of chaps like us have to get better at fighting. Home-Office-funded sparring sessions? Tax relief on protein shakes? Subsidised dumbbells? Come on, Dave, you need a few policies.

... or is it?

Then it all becomes more complex when Sieghart attempts a double-bluff:

opponents of David Cameron have become so obsessed with his upbringing.

OK, we got that: so the way to ignore we ignore what Sieghart deems "inverted snobbery" is to write about it? And who is responsible for this "class hatred" (Sieghart's own term in her opening sentence):

The Daily Mirror uses the words “Tory toff” as a prefix almost every time the Conservative leader’s name appears.

Gosh, that really must hurt. And?

... now the attacks on Cameron are coming from the Tory Right, too. This week, Peter Hitchens, a fanatically conservative columnist, presented a Channel 4 programme that even called itself Cameron: Toff at the Top. Hitchens is miserable because Cameron has embraced social liberalism, which he despises. Now he has no one to vote for. Poor chap.

Then comes a warm defence of Cameron because:

When his first son was small, he brought him along to meetings in a Moses basket and bottle-fed him. This wasn’t ostentatious New Mannery but what you do when you are having to share the care of a fragile child with a wife who also has a demanding job. Where Cameron went to school has no relevance to the family pressures he faces now.

Well, actually, Mary Ann, being grandson of an American grain-magnate, from a line of stockbrokers, related to royalty and the Duff-Coopers, married to an heiress who (by mummy's remarriage) is linked to the Astors, suggests one might afford the daycare, rather than, like us peasants, being:

so brutally acquainted with Britain’s public services.

This is not particularly convincing stuff. Sieghart is a bright lady, despite Private Eye's mockery. Here she manages no real defence of a Cameron who can bestride the world like a Colossus. This stuff is not going to play with the readers of the Sun.

So what's her game?

Public Information Research shows Sieghard's personal network:
There's the band of obvious suspects from the BBC (Evan Davis, Margaret Hill, Naughtie and Paxo) and the girls-together-in-journalism support group (Bronwen Maddox, Anne McElvoy). And Julia Hobsbawm was Sarah Macauley's (i.e. Mrs Gordon Brown's) PR partner. [And if anything thinks all this evidences Malcolm's perennial persecution-complex, Cristina Odone got there first.]

Then we notice former Ministers (Robertson and Mandelson) and tentacles into the bowels of Downing Street (Alastair Campbell, David Hill, Jonathan Powell, Allie Saunders).

Robertson ran NATO. Michael Maclay was briefing for IFOR in Bosnia; Bob Stewart was British General in Bosnia, and Matthew Rycroft is HM Ambassador in Bosnia. James Sherr is big in the UK Defence Academy (well known institution, that).

Down and dirty

Malcolm's nostrils are perceptibly twitching. Christopher Meyer ran the political section of the Embassy in Moscow in the early '80s, long before he was Blair's Ambassador at the court of Bill Clinton and Dubya. Phil Bassett's name came up as an active e-mailer in the Hutton Enquiry. James Eberle is a colourful addition: formerly Admiral and royal briefer during the Falklands campaign, later head of Chatham House (and forced to deny being a Stasi mole, but admitting providing a Chatham House laptop to a prostitute of his acquaintance).

Malcolm is naturally suspicious, particularly so when he suspects spookery and skull-duggery.

But just look at who is at the end of the alphabet! None other than Alan Lee Williams and Paul D. Wolfowitz. The former was once Labour MP for Hornchurch, but best known (alleged as the CIA's man) policing the Young Socialists: fierily pro-Europe from the start, and an "Atlanticist" at the time of Vietnam and subsequently. Needless to say, he defected to the SDP in 1980. And, the pearl in the oyster: Paul Dundes Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank, but also chief architect of the Bush Doctrine which gave us the invasion of Iraq.

Being paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you

But, today, Malcolm's focus is on Cameron.

Cameron seems to be a plasticine figure, moulded by whoever comes by: that he bears the imprint of the last arse to sit on him. The "old right" of the UKIPites and old fogeys of the Mail and the Telegraph are out to nail him, presumably because they can't get gluteal traction on him. They want rid of him, in the short or long term, and in the Tory Party that usually means something to do with Britain-in-Europe. Cameron's one real move on Europe (to pull out of the European Peoples Party) was a sop to the right in his campaign for the leadership, but has proved to be farcical (a liaison with Czech rightists and a single Bulgar). And, in that context, consider again the opinions of Mary Ann's dinner guests: does that help?

The Tory ultras are adding to the noises in the jungle that Miliband is the one to see Cameron off, that Gordon isn't up to it. Those critics are not doing it to create mischief in the Labour Party (Mandelson is up for that on his weekend trips to London): they seem genuinely set on securing a trouncing for Cameron in 2009.

So what's with the Miliband thing? Well, apart from the obvious, he has cred with the cousins: a Kennedy Scholar at MIT (and an American-born son), no less. He is "sound" on the environment: presumably that means not bashing the oil companies until they've had time to ramp up on biofuels, not penalising the airlines, not flip-flopping on wind power and nukes. That's ticked two key boxes: the CIA and Big Business. More, much more on this as events transpire.

Or is it because Gordon is not quite so America-friendly, that after the take-over the relationship with Washington may not be so cosy? Where's George Smiley when he's needed?

Hitchens had the story that Cameron only got the job at Central Office because of a 'phone call from Buck House. Perhaps that call was re-routed from Langley.

❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖❖

"And now back to our feature film"

In the last reel, rifle-in-crook-of-arm, white-hunter Stewart Granger gets the girl; the revolting natives are grateful to have been put in their place and so sporran away their blow-pipes till the sequel; evil is driven from the land, and all the wrongs are righted. The python, alas, bought it twenty minutes back.

The plot of this one may not be so predictable.

No reptiles were hurt in the making of this blog.

Sphere: Related Content

Malcolm read the telly critics with interest:

What would be the take on Hitchens' demolition derby around the Cameron circuit?

As predicted, Andrew Billen in The Times was distinctly sniffy:

That Cameron is a chameleon in a PR man’s suit is beyond dispute. But a hypocrite? Hitchens was in no mood to consider the alternative proposition that the electorate’s thrice-delivered rejection of the Tory Right might just have persuaded Cameron not only that the old polices were keeping him from office but were Wrong. People change their minds, as a former Trotskyite currently now keeping up the spirits of The Mail on Sunday readers recalled. As for the peril posed by the coalescence of British parties in a mushy liberal centre, isn’t the greater threat to democracy having an Opposition that’s pathologically unelectable? Hitchens’s argument suffered from not having bothered to define what Conservatism stood for, a definition worth attempting since, in my memory, it has been at various times, free-trade and protectionist, appeasing and belligerent, pro-market and corporatist, for Europe and against it.

Then there is Sam Wollaston in The Guardian, nicely acidic in the Nancy Banks-Smith slot:

It's a pity Dispatches: Cameron - Toff at the Top (Channel 4, "the liberal elite's favourite TV station", as Pete once called it) is written and presented by Hitchens, a man with all the charm of Gollum. Because if you can stomach it, and the hypocrisy, there's some interesting stuff in there; and it's high time the media-Cameron love-in ended and he got a bit of a kicking. Not only will Dave leap, lordily, on to any bandwagon that's passing, but he actually doesn't believe in anything at all. According to Hitchens, he's an opportunist, a chancer, a politician who has never actually been interested in politics. And by attempting to copy New Labour he has essentially eliminated voter choice.

Worse still, he's a horrid toff, and was once a member of the Bullingdon Club, a bunch of braying Hooray Henries (no Henriettas allowed) at Oxford who dress up, get horribly drunk, smash places up, then get Daddy to send a cheque to take care of the damage. Never mind the U-turns, or the lack of policies, surely the photograph of him, puffed out like a peacock with his public-school Bullingdon chums, will be enough to ensure he never gets anywhere near Downing Street.

Yes! That's nearer the flavour we want.

However, what intrigued Malcolm was how the Daily Mail would take it. The Mail was far from a cheer-leader for Cameron in the leadership election; and not much has apparently changed. A small, but significant problem: the only way Malcolm would allow that fascist rag into the house is as cat-litter (and, since Malcolm is ailurophobic, Redfellow Hovel is a feline-free zone). So, he sneaked a look at the on-line edition.

He discovered no review (at least that he could find) but something better. Peter Hitchens, of course, is a Mail on Sunday columnist; and he used his column this week to trail the programme.

Έυρηκα.

Gold dust. Let's start with two magnificent portraits of the great man.

The first is Cameron after losing a Conservative seat at Stafford in 1997 on a 10¾ swing (slightly above the national swing?), and obviously practising for 2009. It doesn't help us to resolve the mystery of the migrating hair-parting, alas.

It can't get better! Or can it?

Next up is young Dave, still up at Oxford, but not in his Bullingdon Club waistcoat-and-tails. Here he is holidaying in Kenya, snapped by his then girl-friend.

Now all Malcolm wants for his birthday triptique is Dave in plus-fours, shooting at Glenarm Castle, County Antrim. Any sightings of that one?

That's the hors d'oeuvre. Now for the real meat.

Malcolm has to hand it to the brothers Hitchens: they are magnificent haters. Pete vs Cameron. Chris vs Galloway. For some time Pete vs Chris, and vice versa. Well, actually, Chris vs pretty well anyone. And yet Malcolm finds it hard to disagree all the time with either.

So to the Mail on Sunday trailer for the dump on Cameron:

Principles, old boy? What are they? The poor dears [i.e. Tories] just feel unsettled and unhappy when they and their old friends from Eton aren’t Cabinet Ministers, much as they feel uneasy and upset about the banning of foxhunting – which arouses the only true political passion most of them have. They are angry and impatient about being deprived of their birthright. So angry that they are prepared to do almost anything, and spend almost anything, to scramble back into Downing Street.

David Cameron is their revenge. And that’s one of the reasons why his toffishness and extraordinary, semi-aristocratic background is such a big theme of the programme I’ve made ...

Hitchens is quite positive in this polemic:

Proper conservative politics come from the suburbs, not from the broad acres. The gentry have no idea how much New Labour’s policies hurt us down in Acacia Avenue. They’ve never been there and regard our privet hedges and semi-detached homes with just as much horror and disdain as the Islington Left do.

The Mail piece inevitably is a far more effective synopsis than Malcolm attempted last night (and Malcolm feels embarrassed not to have seen it aforehand). There are significant differences in the conclusions made in the Mail and on Channel 4.

The first is this:

The current storm of personal abuse directed against Gordon Brown is a coded way for New Labour people to endorse the new Tories, in whose hands the Blair legacy of political correctness and high taxation will be quite safe. I predict high-level defections from New Labour to the Tories in the next 18 months.

Well, there's always a Reg Prentice. But who now remembers him? As for "high-level defections", things are rarely as simple as that. Malcolm remembers the dark early '80s, when Bill Rodgers was playing siren for the SDP while the London Labour Briefing were being thought-police (a pushmi-pullyu double act). Personal experience, over many years on the close fringes of things, tells Malcolm that far more "defections" are the consequence of short-term ambition and personal grievances (both grieving and being grieved against) than anything ideological.

Hitchens, pace Billen above, came from being a university Trot to his present posture. His grasp of dialectics assumes that, just as Butskellism crashed into Thatcherism, so "the Blair legacy of political correctness and high taxation" must also meet its inevitable antithesis.

The other is the way Hitchens finished his programme, by hanging a hat on Richard Neville's "inch of difference". Malcolm suspects few younger Brits quickly call to mind Neville, who breezed in and invented Oz (a magazine and then a moniker) and went to gaol for it. He's still about, as Quixotic as ever, describing himself as a "futurist". And, as far as Malcolm recalls, the original quotation was:

there may be only an inch of difference between Wilson and Heath but it's in that inch that we live...

It achieved currency largely from the lips of John Lennon in an interview with Robin Blackburn and Tariq Ali for Red Mole.

Hitchens was arguing that Tories must be different: this used to be the "clear blue water" of John Major and Michael Howard. Hitchens' platform, it needs to be remembered, is to look for a realignment on the right of British politics, and the demise of the present conservative party. He maintains that, by being a Blair-clone in the mushy middle, Cameron:

• puts opportunism above any principle. [How true, how very true.]
• leaves the right wing open for occupation by others. That presumably means the BNP, particularly so if UKIP is dying the death. UKIP seems to be where Hitchens belongs, with his anti-EU rhetoric and his social attitudes. And couldn't UKIP do with him—and, in a perfect world, the Mail. Though, admittedly in the Northern Ireland Assembly election a sole UKIP candidate took 2.7%: that made the total NITory haul of o.5% as derisory as it deserved.
• disenfranchises natural Tories (in the same way "New Labour" has disenfranchised socialists, perhaps).

In other words, Hitchens is a Whig, a free liberal (NOT Lib-Dem). He distinguished himself from Thatcherism some time ago:

she failed to fight the Left on the equally important battlefields of education, the family, morality and culture, a terrible waste of a unique and unrepeatable opportunity. She spectacularly failed to reform the BBC in a way that would benefit the country. And she had a thoroughly unconservative contempt for institutions and traditions. She was also far too presidential, and some of her actions opened the way for Labour's much greater attack on the constitution. Her economic policies were far from perfect, and did much unintended damage to British manufacturing industry. And she allowed herself to be browbeaten into joining the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a surrender that did not save her

So, in hopes of further Hitchens' squibs, Malcolm (borrowing Norman Clegg's words again) seriously entertains hope that this one will continue to be potty on a full-time basis.

Sphere: Related Content

Hitchens on Cameron (part three)

Hitchens starts with the cricket-team-and travelling-reserves that makes up the Old Etonian contingent of the Tory Front Bench. He suggests that Cameron is already thinking of burying this disproportionate presence, at least until an election is out of the way.

Then on to the failure of Cameron's (i.e. Steve Hilton's) "A-list". He makes a telling point that, by promoting the potential candidates acceptable to London Metrosexuals, the Tories were actually reducing the diversity and depth of talent available. He also points out that, despite his stated support for women candidates, Cameron remains a member of White's, which is still unisex.

So Hitchens then addresses what he calls Cameron's "character transplant", as evidenced by:

1. The photo-opportunity with huskies. This is contrasted with George Monbiot relating his "dismal experience" at the Tory Conference, which he found "as lively as a catacomb". When Hitchens puts to Michael Gove the contrast between Cameron's famous windmill, and his previous description of windfarms as "gigantic birdblenders", Gove says this proves Cameron's "great sense of humour".
2. The "hug-a-hoodie" moment. This, argues Hitchens, at one stroke destroyed the Tory reputation for toughness on crime. Again, he contrasts what is acceptable at "the fashionable dinner tables of London" with the reality of life in Rockferry, Merseyside. He calls in aid no less than Frank Field, who makes a telling point that, by deserting the path of rightness, the Cameroon Tories are leaving positions open to "extremist parties defending law and justice".

Norman Tebbit is set up to repeat his usual dislike of Cameron's reformism, and we are moving into the peroration.

Hitchens states his essential thesis: that the Tory Party has been captured by an "ambitious cabal" possessed of "remarkably flexible views", and this amounts to a wholesale "abandonment of party principles".

Gove attempts to defend Cameroonery: it has "modernised the party"; modern Toryism is cautious and small-scale, committed to free enterprise and support for the family.

Hitchens is implacable in his end-note, quoting Richard Neville's "inch of difference". If there is only "an inch of difference" between the two main parties, then "that is where we all live". If there is no difference, there is no choice; and when there is no choice, there is no liberty. It was worth sitting through for that dictum alone.

All this is Malcolm's unaided and instant reading. Others may have seen something different.
However, to Malcolm, this was an involving and important piece of television. It was refreshing to see a Daily Mail rightist like Hitchens underscoring every prejudice that lefty Malcolm has about the Cameroonies.

It will be interesting to see how tomorrow's reviewers treat the programme. Malcolm suspects it will have come too close to the bone for many. Doubtless, the egregious snake-like Steve Hilton, "the shadow leader of the opposition" and Cameron's "Rasputin" will already have greased the relevant wheels. So expect few squeaks.

Sphere: Related Content

Hitchens on Cameron (part two)

It gets better.

Hitchens opens up some new ground: how Michael Howard delayed his departure to allow Cameron to establish a presence; and the significance of Steve Hilton, another PR slug, as Cameron's Svengali.

Hitchens attributes Cameron's progress, against the flow of Toryism, to his "membership of the media class".

The segment closed with the promise that the third part would address Cameron's need to reform "the elderly unloved besat that is the Tory Party".
Sphere: Related Content

Hitchens on Cameron (so far)

At the end of Act One, we haven't learned much new (though the interviewees are interesting choices). The episode at the Oxford tailors was quite delightfully hootable.

Then, the cruncher. First ad up: Volkswagen Golf, with the sound-track: They call me the great pretender. Superb! Sphere: Related Content

Worth the click

Anyone who has not yet been there should take the trouble to go to Nick Robinson latest blog-entry, A close encounter.

Malcolm has never been a great fan of Robinson's analyses, but this one works. The two anecdotes — the lift and the two-ton Cortina — are instructive of how far we have come, and why today is important for the "legacy".

Triples all round, and a large orange-juice for "the Doctor". Sphere: Related Content

"Aarggh!" said the dictionary elf.

A tense moment when Malcolm reached page 9 of this morning's Times (and, yes, it's also on the web edition):

Soldiers on destress leave in Cyprus 'beat up taxi driver'

Now there's a sub-editor who should receive a kicking worse than the one afforded today's duty elf.

What, apart from its ownership, is wrong with The Times these days? Where have the standards gone? Eny fule kno (see footnote) that the line could easily contain the necessary hyphen through a simple edit: "Soldiers de-stressing in Cyprus 'beat up taxi driver' ". This achieves the same in a handful-fewer characters. Alternatively, in the print edition, a slight cropping of the accompanying (and not particularly helpful) photograph would have allowed the use of that single extra character.

Malcolm noticed that the Catalans have a similar problem, neatly solved, with the ambiguous use of double-l. An example is the Estadi Olímpic de Montjuïc in Barcelona, which was later renamed for Lluis Companys, and is now the home of RCD Espanyol. It is, of course, also the venue for Wednesday's Euro 2008 qualifier between up-the-road Andorra and crap England. The double-l in Lluis Companys' name is deliberate. To reach the ground, many attenders will cross Avenguda del Paral.lel, the street at the foot of the Montjuïc, or use the El Paral.lel Metro station at the foot of the funicular. Notice in all of that the precise use of punctuation, helpfully indicating pronunciation. So the Catalans have solved a problem with the simple use of a stop.

Aside from that, Malcolm hopes that any lefty on that visit will take the time to recall just why Lluis Companys deserves to be commemorated. He was President of the Catalan Generalitat and therefore regarded as leader of the 1934 Catalan rising against the centre-right (and clericist) Second Republic. For that he received 30 years in quod. He was released when the Popular Front took power in 1936, and was Minister for the Navy. Significantly, he was the instigator of the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias, bringing POUM and CNT together in an (uneasy) alliance. The full horror was yet to come ...

After Franco's victory, Companys took refuge in France. In due course, he was hoovered up by the Nazis; and in September 1940 was shipped back to Spain, along with Juan Péiro of CNT and the socialist Julián Zugazagoitia. Companys was executed in Montjuïc Castle.

Malcolm, the cataloguer-elf notes, has well-thumbed copies of Hugh Thomas, and Gerald Brenan besides the new-comer Antony Beever.

"Yes, indeed", says Malcom, and proudly points out original Left Book Club editions of Spain in Revolt (Harry Gannes and Theodore Repard, Gollancz, 1936) and Spanish Testament (Arthur Koestler, "with an Introduction by the Duchess of Atholl", Gollancz 1937).

And now the footnote.

Malcolm believes this much-used phrase is from Molesworth (now, delightfully, on line). What is staggering, however, is the price-tag here. More sensibly, go here.



Sphere: Related Content

Malcolm has a chortle:

The elves have had it easy of late. Even on his return, Malcolm was quiescent. However, things are stirring.

There was a snort of mirth as the on-line edition of the Washington Post arrived in his in-box, in particular the opening paragraph of a story by Michael D. Shear:

New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a self-made billionaire, has told friends more than once that his definition of good financial planning is making sure the check to the undertaker bounces when it's finally time to go.

Bloomberg, it should be recalled, is the 44th in the Forbes American rich list (and 94th in the world).

As for the rest of the article, suggesting that Bloomberg is looking to nominate himself as an independent candidate for the 2008 Republican election, at a personal cost of $500M, Malcolm mutters, "Norfolk enchants". Appropriately, Malcolm notes, Bloomberg's denial (or non-denial denial) was issued by:

Stu Loeser, Bloomberg's press secretary.

The elves eye each other, and speculate on these cryptic comments. Sphere: Related Content

A find, a definite recommendable find!

Malcolm, in Barcelona, imparts the following communique:

Most of the various guide-book recommendations for the Gràcia district seem somewhat bogus. For example, the Gràcia Cafés page of the DK Eyewitness Travel "Top 10 Barcelona" is either totally out-of-date or overly-imaginative.

However, immediately round the corner from the vaunted (and, today at least, dead to the world) Pl. Rius i Taulet (see page 115) is illadegracia. Admittedly, red-in-tooth-and-claw carnivores need not bother: it's veggy.

A late "menu of the day" lunch at €6.50 a head, a bottle of Bach rosé at €8 ... and Robert is very definitely one's parent's brother. And, unlike the stuff on the shelves of one's local Tesco, Catalan rosé, in its own territory, chilled but not excessively so, is worthy of the quaffing. Sphere: Related Content

Malcolm asks:

Short of putting your shirt on one horse chasing another's bum round a circuit, is there any "sport" more pointless and offensive than Formula One Motor Racing? Sphere: Related Content

I've been wand'rin' early, wand'rin' late,
New York City to the Golden Gate.

About to make another trip, Malcolm was reminiscing. The elves, whose ken far exceeds that of mortals, at first kept stumm and listened tolerantly.

Today Malcolm was on a favourite topic: trains. He reckons that the finest trip possible was Wells-on-Sea to Fakenham, each way, to grammar school, aged twelve, behind an aging and arthritic ex-GER 4-4-0 Claud Hamilton. The line, the trains and engines are long gone, the age has past. Memory, however, is a bourne to and from which this traveller readily returns.

Then there was the East Coast Line, behind a panting LNER A4 (if one was lucky) or, at worst (at worst?) an A3. Then came the Deltics: and the romance was diesel-smoked away.

Or, once upon a time, the Irish Mail meant something other than a Associated Newspapers re-branding exercise:

Let's face it, the Daily Mail is not even a truly British paper. Its kilted edition for Scotland has done well enough, mainly due to out-spending its rivals on marketing and by discounting. But it hasn't really dented that market either. The Daily Mail is essentially English, isn't it? Well, isn't it?

For a an indication of just how truly "Oirish" this artifact really is, Malcolm urges a try at the website "www.dailymail.ie". 'Nuff said. [Agitated nodding from the elves in green.]

No, the Irish Mail was something between a hooley and a wake. For Malcolm, it meant going home to Mum: nip out Trinity Back Gate, a couple of jars at Westland Row. The bar open on the Cambria (or it might be the Hibernia, or in the pits of winter maintenance, Heaven help us, the ghastly Princess Maud). At Holyhead, a midnight assignation with an LMS Royal Scot. For others, though, the same journey would be bitter, a first taste of leaving home and emigration:

...from Chester onwards there is nothing but flatlands and sights of industry, mine-tops, slag heaps, fields of green that seem sickly after the emerald grass of Ireland, cows of a colour and shape never seen on the other side of the Irish Sea, wagon-loads of coal, poultry farms, and very rarely the sight of even a low hill.

[That's Reardon Conner's A Plain Tale from the Bogs, 1937 and long out-of-print].

Noticing growing restlessness, and even an unsuppressed yawn, among the elves, Malcolm changed tack. His mind meandered to recent trips on Amtrak.

Two years, two trips.

The first from New York on the Vermonter. 324 miles to Montpelier ("Mont-peel-yer", none of your fancy French stuff). Scheduled for 8½ hours and, no matter what, the twenty-minute smoking break stops are religiously observed. Train 56 leaves Penn Station 42 minutes late. At Berlin, CT, a passenger trips and falls: so we leave 66 minutes late. As darkness falls, into Vermont, the schedule slips further, until arrival at Montpelier 80 minutes adrift. The train still has three further stops, about the same number of paying passengers, and 90 minutes to go.

And yet it is an experience Malcolm regards benevolently. The second half of the trip northwards is, like Steve Goodman's City of New Orleans:

Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders.

At New Haven, the electric loco is replaced by a diesel. Inevitably the passing towns turn their backs on the railway; but, heading up the river valley in Connecticut, the scenery changes from industrial wasteland to silvan greenery, with repetitive siren-wails for every crossing. Then there is the extraordinary jockeying that happens at Palmer, MA, when the Vermonter switches from the New England Central tracks to CSX. There is no scheduled halt at Palmer (population 12,500), but as in Casablanca, we wait ... and wait ... and wait ...

The leisurely progress of the Vermonter is a contrast to Malcolm's experience on the other side of the continent. Last October he took the Coast Starlight from Seattle to Portland, just 186 miles and 4 hours. From Vancouver to Los Angeles, all 35¼ hours of it, this was—and should be—one of the world's great train-journeys. The train is deliberately timed for one particular high-spot:

north of Santa Barbara on a spectacular 42-mile stretch of track that hugs the Pacific. This is coastline you cannot see from a car because we are traveling through Vandenberg Air Force Base, and there is no public road... Everyone here has a camera pointed out the window. The ocean, flat and calm, stretches to the horizon in bands of purple, aquamarine, cobalt and indigo. The shore is undeveloped, deserted. Seabirds float on updrafts.

For Malcolm that must be another trip, another year.

Because Amtrak has only passage rights over (in this case) Union Pacific track, the delays can be considerable, hence the moniker "Coast Starlate". So, it was to Malcolm's surprise that everything ran to time: a to-the-second departure from King Street, Seattle and nosing into Union Station, Portland, a minute or three early. Again there is spectacular scenery: along Puget Sound and under the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (nary a quiver!), Mounts Rainier and St Helens omnipresent to the east, until the route reaches and crosses the Columbia River. Unlike the Vermonter, most seats seemed filled.

The United States has to come to terms with what it wants with mass transport. The big cities all have efficient and reliable (but not fast) commuter networks. The resurgence of light-rail projects is amazing in the land of the automobile. Presumably long-distance heavy freight will also survive. Stand (and you will have to) at New York Penn and count the announcements for Amtrak delays.

Once the major airports (and LAX would be a welcome start) are all linked to the PTAs, the cross-country train journey seems doomed. And yet, despite the modest speeds Amtrak achieves, the time factor is not greatly significant. Boston South to 8th and 33rd is just on four hours (and that's not the Acela express): in real life, that's quicker than the 75min BOS-JFK air route. Just don't try to convince any road-warrior.

Malcolm found he was surrounded by the low drone of dozing elves. The rest is silence. Sphere: Related Content

Which twin has the loony?

The two Sunday "heavies". Two articles, both tag-lined Comment. Compare and contrast:

The non-fictional drama of David Cameron's week has been provided by the unsexy and unsmart but all- too-real character of Patrick Mercer. It was with a call to his mobile that the Tory leader sacked his spokesman on home affairs from the front bench. The MP for Newark had to be fired after he'd suggested that a lot of black soldiers were 'idle and useless' and being called 'nigger' and 'black bastard' was just part of 'the way it is in the army'.

Is he a racist? He says not. His colleagues say not. More significantly, some black soldiers who served with Colonel Mercer say they don't regard him as a racist either. What we can say for definite is that he is an industrial-grade idiot. He was plain wrong to suggest that black soldiers should put up with being racially abused as par for the course in the army. He sounded just ludicrous when he claimed that soldiers with red hair were more likely to suffer from abuse than members of ethnic minorities. He displayed fully saturated stupidity by suggesting there's no difference between being called a 'ginger bastard' and being called a 'black bastard'. There are no known organisations dedicated to inciting hatred against people with red hair.

These were not just a few off-the-cuff remarks tricked out of him or wrenched from context by an ambushing reporter. They were volunteered in an interview and at length. After he had been sacked, he said: 'I very much regret the interpretation that has been put on my comments.' That, I'm afraid, shows that Mr Mercer still can't see what he got wrong. It was the comments themselves that he should have been regretting.

And:

Can someone tell me what it was that Patrick Mercer MP said which was either racist or offensive? I’ve been mulling it over for 48 hours and I’m still clueless. The Tory homeland security spokesman, a former army colonel, was sacked last week for having said that in the forces, squaddies have been heard to refer to colleagues from ethnic minorities as “black bastards”, just as they might call obese colleagues “fat bastards”. He also said that he’d come across plenty of idle, useless soldiers from ethnic minorities who used racial prejudice as a means of excusing their uselessness.

For this, David Cameron sacked him and sections of the liberal media were gripped by paroxysms of outrage. Why? Did Cameron hitherto believe that army squaddies addressed each other as if in attendance at a Guardian editorial meeting? And Mercer did not say that he approved of their racism; indeed, he said that when he was a serving officer he came down very hard on it. So in what possible sense was this racist?

Similarly, does Cameron have evidence that Mercer was incorrect in his assertion that a tiny minority of black army recruits used the excuse of racial prejudice to explain away ineptitude? Of course not. A man is sacked for explaining, with candour, what he’d observed during his time serving this country as a soldier. Sacked by a man whose effortless dog-sled ascent to political power has involved nothing more hazardous than the occasional Notting Hill dinner party where the chablis wasn’t adequately chilled.

Now, says Malcolm to the elves-on-parade, which is the Sunday Times, and which is the Observer? Which is Rod Liddle and which is Andrew Rawnsley? Which is decent and liberal and which is trite and tripe? For once, a general agreement.

That wasn't a hard one, was it? "No", from the assembled and generally-relieved elvery.

Now, says Malcolm, let's not hear exculpation that Liddle is not as "serious" as Rawnsley, that one is delivering the political heavy-hitting, and one is merely light-weight and "witty". Liddle, after all, was the former editor of BBC Radio 4's Today. He was not "asked to resign" because of the Gilligan cock-up, though it he was who brought Gilligan and his ilk into the orbit of the programme. He was asked to go because his journalism (in particular, suggesting that the fox-hunting mentality was loathsome, and Tory support thereof would rebound) was felt to compromise the Beeb's position. Liddle did, however, go on to defend Gilligan (Liddle, by then, had his leg-over at The Spectator), though not in front of the Hutton Enquiry.

As if to emphasise just this point, Liddle points out his personal connection to Mercer:

Mercer is a mate — I once employed him as a defence correspondent on the Today programme.

So Malcolm asks once again, what is the standing, the use, the position of the Sunday Times in all this? Are we seeing the "disinterested" Times being cranked [sic] up to be a UK press version of Fox News:
(for an example last Friday:)

The Dems are fighting with each other over how to lose in Iraq quickly enough.

and the New York Post?
(for today's example:)

When the U.S. media isn't ignoring Latin America, it's feeding us leftist lies that play into the hands of bigots on both sides of the political aisle.

A passing wind: Is Murdoch grooming Liddle (and Liddle aiming) to be Anne Coulter in drag? Sphere: Related Content

Malcolm considers the 26th March deadline:
The elves have had to put up with Malcolm's spleen over a tedious debate on "who is a Unionist?" This wearisome parish-pump tit-for-tat, Box-and-Cox stuff is soooo misguided. And we're to blame. To adapt what P.G.Wodehouse didn't say about Scotsmen: it's not hard to distinguish a Unionist from a blithe ray of sunshine. We mainlanders, by paying heed to their nonsense, have inflated the self-importance of the Ulster politician on Graf von Zeppelin proportions.

(In)famously, Harold Wilson denounced the Ulster Workers’ Strikers of May 1974 as “spongers” who expected the rest of the UK to subsidise the Northern Irish way of life. That accusation remains valid for Unionists to answer.

The facts are these: the identifiable Government expenditure per head, per year (2002/3 figures) is £5,453 in England, £6,479 in Wales, £6,579 in Scotland and £7,267 in Northern Ireland. Nor can that be justified on grounds of relative poverty or affluence.

There are massive pockets of unemployment and deprivation across the UK, not excluding the “prosperous” South East, South West and the former pit districts. You think small-town Derry has it hard? Don’t believe Malcolm: read the Special Report in the Guardian: Neglected or deserted, seaside awaits the turn of the tide. And then consider this: for every UK Government £ spent on the unemployed kid in Eastbourne or Yarmouth, his/her opposite number in the Six Counties gets £1.55.

Then there is the preposterous waste that is Stormont. 108 AMs, each entitled to £31, 817 (2003-04 figures, naturally), with up to £48,000 “office expenses”. OK, OK: those also in the Westminster Parliament have a “salary abatement”, so don’t jump on Malcolm for that.

The people of the North of Ireland are grotesquely over-represented: 18 Westminster MPs; 3 MEPS in Brussels; 108 AMs in (or not in) Stormont; 11 Departments in the Executive, each with officials and tea-cosies; 26 local councils. And all, in sum, achieving precisely what?

Meanwhile, the worm is turning. The “English Democrats” claim an opinion poll shows 68% support for a specifically “English Parliament”. This would be trivial had the Tories not stated a position on the West Lothian Question . Under a Tory Government, Scottish MPs would be disqualified from participating on English Bills.

There goes the Union.

There was a time when Ulster Unionists were important in Westminster. They took the Tory Whip. In effect, they were Churchill’s majority in the 1951 Parliament. A Unionist was Harold Macmillan’s bag-carrier.

Today?

That orange sponge might usefully come back to haunt the DUP:

invented by Ian Paisley. Back in 1974, at the time of the UWC strike, Harold Wilson had gone on TV to accuse Unionists and Loyalists of being spongers on the British Taxpayer. The Supreme Sponge was, naturally enough, irate and duly appeared on TV the next day with a piece of sponge in his buttonhole. Many unionists followed his example and for weeks we had the unsightly spectacle of unionism parading about with its brains pinned to the lapels of its coat. It wasn't a great campaign: the design features didn't lend themselves well to the grey skies of the Six Counties. One good shower and the sponge-soaked lapel of Unionism was sagging to its waist.

How about UK officials and ministers, about to “negotiate”, now sporting their sponges across the table in protest at overweening demands from Paisley & Co.? Sphere: Related Content