Four stories in one day to remind us why we need judges

We are going to need a strong judiciary in these dying years of New Labour. Four events reported today remind us how contemptuous Government has become of those who elect it.

The Government announced plans to exempt MPs from a requirement to detail their expenses. The Treasury announced that it would not be hurrying to compensate those who lost their pensions in Equitable Life. The Government said that Heathrow Airport is to be extended without Parliamentary debate. And John Mortimer, fierce fighter for individual liberty, died. I do not suppose there was in fact a connection between this last event and the other three, but it is easy to see one.

Got nothing to say? Send for Harman

There was not much Labour could say as the extent of the overnight debacle in the local elections became clear. If there is not much to say, Harriet Harman is just the person you need to say it, and the mere fact that it was Harman who was sent out to speak on the Today programme this morning was evidence enough that Labour was lost for words.

She was eloquent and fluent as streams of nothing poured from her mouth. John Humprys was gentle with her in a way he would not have been with, say, Geoff Hoon or Hazel Blears or any of the others from the substitutes bench who might have been sent out on New Labour’s behalf. It would be like kicking a dandelion.

O f*!k its Harman – but who cares?

O f*!k its Harman said a party worker when Harriet Harman was elected. What does it matter compared with all the rest of the mismanagement and incompetence? asks Libby Purves. Brown’s Government has proved a flop even at cheating says Matthew Parris.

Now is a good time to recall the reaction of one party worker on the night Harriet Harman was elected deputy leader of the Labour Party.

The girl shown in the video clip Oh f*!k its Harman on Guy TV was speaking for many at the time, including, I suspect, Gordon Brown.

None of it matters very much, of course. “..a rich weirdo secretly gave money to help a couple of Labour anoraks beat each other to be the new John Prescott” said Libby Purves in the Times on 4 December (And now for the scandals that matter), before enumerating a few things (quite a few things actually) which mattered far more.

Will Digby Jones be the first for Davy Jones?

So, now we know who are the crew members of SS Scottish Mist as it chugs off into heavy seas. Rather more midshipmen and cabin boys than one would like to see, and several passengers. Captain Brown is on the bridge, his telescope firmly clamped to his bad eye. “Full taxation ahead, Mr Darling” he cries. “Pile on more regulation” he shouts down the tubes.

The interesting question now, is who will walk the plank first? Most money will be on Harriet Harman – that unfortunate disconnect between brain and mouth has earned her a public rebuke already, and the ship is barely out of port.

Mouthing a welcome for Harman

May I recommend that you turn to Guido Fawkes‘ blog for an entry of 25 June called “Oh F**K Who’s that girl“.

It links to a video clip of the moment when Harriet Harman’s victory as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party is announced. As Guido observes, it does not take the skills of a lip-reader to know what the girl behind Harman says just before she buries her head in her hands.

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Cameron swings both ways on defectors

By chance, I read two articles today which suggest that David Cameron’s ambivalence on policy matters extends to his view of party defectors. It seems to depend on which way they are going.

In the Times on Saturday, he talks about Quentin Davies, a Conservative MP who felt that he deserved wider fame than he had won for his conviction for cruelty to sheep. He defected to Labour on the eve of Gordon Brown’s elevation, after writing a long and contrived letter to David Cameron, and was duly herded into the House of Commons by Labour groupies to be paraded as a rather empty token of Brown’s pulling power.

Wrong again about Hazel Blears

I said a few days ago (Not Blears, surely?)that I might have been wrong about Hazel Blears. I had thought she was the worst possible person of the six candidates to be Deputy Leader of the Labour Party but that, having watched them all jump through David Dimbleby’s hoops, I decided that merely being intensely irritating made her the best of a lack-lustre bunch.