Oh, and let’s not forget Leetle Teetch Sarkozy, pictured in the same article warmly welcoming Gadaffi to the G20 summit. Absolutely no truth whatsoever in the crazy rumours put about by the desperate sex-crazed dictator (Gaddafi, not Sarkozy) that someone put funny money into the 2007 French election campaign.

Here's Gaddafi with his mate Berlosconi and one of his 40 virgin female bodyguards - 39 if Silvio had anything to do with it

Gaddafi may have had a head start in the race for the hotly-contested title of most bonkers, loathsome and sociopathic oil-glutted dictator in the Middle East, but he was arguably given a leg up when Ronald Reagan bombed his tent in 1987 and killed his wife, kids and relatives in a vintage example of liberal intervention. Since that time, he took every opportunity to piss off ‘The West’, supporting terrorists of all stripes and persuasions, the nuttier the better. Funny he would react like that.

The rank hypocrisy of his ‘rehabilitation’ has already been discussed in my 2009 article (Oil, money, BP, fear that it might come out in the wash that Libya was at best a bit part player at best in the Lockerbie outrage plus the fact that he was a psychopathic loony). Since he was canonised by Tony Blair Gaddafi may have stopped supporting terrorist groups targeting western interests but he murderously arsed around in Africa with impunity. Moreover, the current Tsunami of cant surrounding the reasons for bombing democracy from 35,000 feet into Libya stands violently at odds with the blind eye shown to last week’s incursion by Saudi soldiers into Bahrain, killing rebels (not freedom fighters?) opposed to the weak-chinned Sheikh presiding over western interests in that boozy  Gulf bastion of R+R and general jiggery-pokery. Complicated? Not really. File under SNAFU (Situation Normal. All Fucked Up).

John J Kelly.

This yellow cake uranium is proof itself that Iraq was the right decision, Hattie, you treacherous hagwitch

Dave was backed by the big money Illuminati. Ed won because the big unions decided that genug was genug in the face of overwhelming evidence, if any more were needed, that New Labour meant old Conservative, with the added ingredient of unquestioning Atlanticism – hence The Economist’s ringing endorsement – unthinking globalisation – ditto the FT’s Martin Wolf’s enthusiasm – lickspittle obeisance to Big Usury. The shrieks of protest from the Guardianistas at the very idea that ANYONE could think that ANYTHING associated with THE UNIONS had any merit whatsoever underlines just how far English politics have drifted to the centre right.

Ed Miliband and his brother, Schnorbits, in happier times

I’m not convinced about Ed, who looks too much like Bernie Winters and sounds too adenoidal to be taken seriously. Though his speech to Conference was workmanlike and it was brave to admit that the murderous and incompetent invasion of  Iraq was ‘a mistake’, he is still an uninspiring figure who went to the same primary school as Boris Johnson, Oxford and, after all, comes from the same gene pool as Banana Boy. He is a devoted environmentalist, however, who seems genuinely committed to repositioning Labour as an alternative to the muddy centre-right – perfect for attracting disillusioned Lib-Dems and securing at least a coalition when the current government implodes as the (partly necessary) cuts cause widespread misery and introduce the possibility, if not the actuality, of civil unrest.

Still, it’s not all bad news. Banana Boy has taken his bat home, after having been caught on camera castigating the awful Harriet Harman for applauding brother Ed’s apology over Iraq (‘why are you clapping? You voted to go to war’). David Milliband’s wife was apparently ‘furious’ that David didn’t get the job (why should we care?) and we shouldn’t forget that he waged a snide and, at times, decidedly unfraternal campaign against Ed, whom, by contrast, kept his dignity.

So, the verdict of Thus, for what it’s worth, is good riddance to Banana Boy and good luck to Ed, who will need it. None of the candidates were up to much, but then again, the government itself isn’t exactly stellar. Ed needs to distance himself from the Blairites, the Brownites, especially Ed Balls, and learn to be constructively confrontational. The middle classes aren’t the only game in town, and though Ed is one of them, his best chance is to concede the need for deficit reduction but ruthlessly expose ideologically-motivated policies which the Tories are finding it increasingly difficult to resist putting into play.

John J Kelly

Mandy is worried about wonky cross dressing.

Yesterday, unlike ‘Lord’ Mandelson, I saw George Osborne deliver his case for the Tories as the party of ‘Progressive Politics” at centre-left Demos think tank HQ. The hounhymns were confounded. Phil Collins – no, not the former drummer of progressive rock group Genesis but the former speechwriter for failed prog rock singer, Tony (Ugly Rumours) Blair – introduced Osborne’s speech as the latest attempt at Tory ‘wordgrab.’ He concluded by thanking Boy George and telling him that he’d be pleased to relay his advice on policy to the Labour war room. Later, on national TV news, a rattled ‘Lord’ Mandelson, snidely referring to Osborne as his ‘old friend,’ accused him of ‘political cross dressing’ and called the whole schtick a ‘sick joke.’ Today, the ever-loyal Guardian published Mandelson’s ‘withering’ response as its lead story, but not the Osborne speech, together with a shrill, biased commentary from a Guardianista (middle) class warrior called Allegra Stratton. Outside wonkworld, nobody cares much about who ‘owns’ the right to be called ‘progressive,’ so why was Mandy so outraged? Surely political stereotype identity theft can’t bother an unelected peer, returning to run the country after a subsidised holiday as a guest of the Rothschilds  - don’t worry, citizens, the Business Secretary didn’t talk business, he and his fellow guests apparently sat around talking about the ‘celebrities they knew.’ Besides, we all know that his week-long stay on the Russian oligarch’s yacht last year had absolutely nothing to do with Deripaska’s purchase, then dumping, of LDV Vans. He’s bigger than that, as his contempt for democratic process clearly demonstrates.

Mandelson would never resort to cross dressing for political or any other purpose. After all, he's Gordon's willy.

No, Mandy was pissed off because Boy George has had the temerity to come back from the dead. As the architect, with Blair, of the highly effective vote winning strategy of stealing the middle class centre from the Tories with pinkwashed versions of Thatcherite ideology, he has every reason to fear its use as a weapon of mass destruction against his own beleaguered, corrupt and morally bankrupt regime. It was doubly galling that the latest body blow was delivered by the whippersnapper to whom he gave a lesson in realpolitik in the Deripaska ‘Yachtgate’ incident (Thus passim) almost exactly a year ago. Many observers, including myself, saw Osborne as the weakest link in the Cameron front line. Yesterday he gave a credible account of himself and pulled off a tricky piece of wonky jiggerypokery with aplomb. Besides, the Tories are the stupid party. This was all too . . . .freaky, man . . . .

Demos, home of much of the New Labour “Third Way” malarky, deserves much of the credit for the New Tory legerdemain. Under its latest director, liberal Blairite Richard Reeves, it  launched the Progressive Conservatism Project in January this year. Osborne’s ‘Third Way’ proposes a ‘progressive’ review of the role of government in the funding and delivery of education, healthcare and other costly social services. He argued that the choice facing the next UK government, faced with public sector spending of between 56-60% of GDP and rising, lies with cutting services and/or dramatically improving efficiencies. Labour claim they will not cut public spending, and neither will they reform their statist intervention in just about everything. The Tory solution involves identifying large savings by further privatisations, this time of the education sector, and proposing that alternative private sector or  ’third sector’ social entrepreneurs will thus be able to maintain or improve existing standards, which have fallen under Labour despite huge financial outlay, at lower cost.

A third way love-in before Tony became a neocon hag and Bill discovered girls and cigars.

Osborne cited Bill Clinton, Jean Crétien and Paul Martin (Canadian Liberals) and Göran Persson (Sweden) as examples of left-leaning centrists whose reforms transformed public finance deficits, whilst (allegedly) improving the state provision of public services. He correctly pointed to the fact that Labour has tried (with mixed success) to introduce a mixed economy in the provision of state education through its Academy schools (favoured by Tory shadow education secretary, Michael Gove, also present yesterday). The New Tory wonks thus turned the tables on (Old) New Labour: if they criticise the part-privatisation/academy opt out choice in education, they stymie some of their own policy. Likewise if they object to private finance initiatives. Moreover, Clinton, Martin and the saintly Swedes were and are poster boys of liberal centrist Blairites. Were it not for Mandy’s pantomime hissiness, conspiracy theorists might conclude that the New Tories were natural inheritors of the Blair project and that they were in this thing together.

While it is hardly progressive for the Tories to advocate prising away the dead hand of the state and to advocate more privatisation, by Tory standards, it is progressive to do so under the banner of an ideological duty of care to society and preservation of the welfare state (in contrast to Thatcher’s ‘there is no such thing as society’). Osborne is right about one thing: under Labour, state spending has recklessly ballooned out of control. We hear nothing about Gordon Brown’s celebrated ‘golden mean,’ whereby balanced expenditure would deliver prosperity allied to economic progress. But it would be truly progressive to question whether privatisation has indeed delivered real benefits to the population at large, as opposed to getting large items of capital expenditure off the treasury balance sheets. Thatcher and Reagan, whom Osborne cited as true progressives at the end of his speech, left legacies of huge budget deficits and social carnage in the form of institutionalised unemployment. Whoever inherits the record deficit left by Brown and his crossdressing puppetmaster will not only inherit a mountain of unemployment, but will also exacerbate the problem by taking a scythe to the bloated public sector. During Persson’s reforms Swedish unemployment soared to 16%, for example.

All of which leaves Demos wonks with plenty of work to do over the next few months. Make sure they aren’t passing your ideas over the fence, though, boy George.

John J Kelly

Women are window dressing in the Brown government, as this picture of Peter Mandelson in weekend attire clearly shows

After 13 months of manufacturing decline and with unemployment heading towards 3 million,  the unelected British PM has promoted the equally unelected Business Secretary, ‘Lord’ Peter Mandelson, to First Secretary of State in a clear signal that his ‘democratic renewal’ measures mean exactly the opposite. Mandelson, who is really calling the shots at the fag end of this ruptured government, wanted the job of Foreign Secretary but David Miliband, who led a failed coup against Brown last autumn, refused to move. Meanwhile, fingers-in-the till Chancellor, Alastair Darling remains in his post because Brown’s choice of replacement, smeary Ed Balls, would have catalysed a full scale revolt. Blairites James Purnell and ‘Europe’ Minister Caroline Flint resigned in high dudgeon, the latter claiming that women were seen as ‘window dressing’ in the Brown cabinet. Ms Flint had posed as a vamp in a red dress in the (left-leaning) Observer Magazine fashion magazine the previous month. Both she and Purnell have serious questions to answer about the creative use of their members’ allowances.

As for women as window dressing – Jacqui Smith, Home Secretary also ‘resigned’ on Thursday. We first highlighted her part in the arrest of Conservative MP Damian Green (Thus passim) as a cover-up for her own abuse of second home allowances several months ago (Thus passim). In the hail of muck and bullets, the passing of Tony McNulty, Employment and Welfare minister, went almost unnoticed. The surveillance society and anti-transparency cheerleader McNulty, who allegedly gouged over £60,000 by claiming mortgage interest relief on his dad’s house (Thus passim) also played a leading role in the diversionary firestorm which saw disgraced Speaker of the House Michael Martin authorise the attack on Damian Green (for uncovering widespread manipulation of immigration statistics) all those months ago.

Back to window dressing. We’ve got an economy to fix. Who better to do it than Brown’s close personal friend ‘You’re fired’ Alan Sugar? He can break the news to the millions who will lose their jobs, perhaps even to Gordon himself. Promoting him to the House of Lords and parachuting him into the job of helping Mandelson sell what’s left of the business sector into the hands of Billy Big Time ‘oligarchs’ who turn out to be short of readies when the bill arrives displays perfect synergy. Both are preening fantasists. Sugar’s manufacturing legacy is terrible: Amstrad PCs, clock radios, rebadged video recorders and plastic phones that didn’t work, mostly manufactured in Asian sweatshops and assembled by monkeys in Neasden. Amstrad shares recorded a record loss in the 1987 stock market crash, when people suddenly woke up to the fact that they were unlikely to make money on products which would represent poor value if you found them in a Christmas cracker. Sugar’s resurgence came as a result of hosting a ‘reality’ TV gameshow, ‘The Apprentice’ where he breaks every rule of employment law and encourages barrow boy antics as a way of doing business. It is difficult to project the true horror of this man, so for the benefit of non-UK readers, here is an insight to his management strategy and business ethics, presented in cruel and unusual fashion by CassetteBoy. This is New Labour’s role model of a business leader. There is nothing more to add.

Except that Gordon got one thing right. Sugar is five times as popular as he is. CassetteBoy vs the Bloody Apprentice has so far had 550,000 YouTube viewers. The equally compelling Gordon Brown has only attracted 116,000 viewers. Joking aside, the country needs a General Election, not because Brown is a monster (he is) but because New Labour and its infighting, self-aggrandising, authoritarian second-raters have impaired democracy beyond recognition. It won’t get one without a fight for precisely that reason.

“It beggars belief that the Secretary for Employment and Welfare Reform should be found to be either incompetent in his interpretation of Parliamentary allowances rules, or disingenous in their interpretation. Likewise the stern Ms. Smith. They should resign in shame. But that’s unlikely to happen. We’ve got more important things to do, such as setting an example of ’shared values’ for the wurreld and all its wee citizens, according to this week’s wheezing initiative to ‘combat Al Qaida‘ by training 60,000 shop workers (hopefully not Woolworths’ employees), council staff and parking attendants to take the war on terror to new levels. It won’t work, Gordon. We’re more scared of you and your light-fingered mates than we are of Bin Laden.” (Thus Passim: March 24, 2009). The same piece detailed how ‘Lord’ Peter Mandelson allegedly spent £500.00 per week on flowers for his office. Mandelson allegedly put in a claim for extensive renovations to his constituency address one week before resigning as an MP to become an EU commissioner. He sold the house for £135,000 profit. Then again, he sees no problem with people becoming ‘filthy rich.’

Thus has consistently speculated that the UK government uses anti-terror laws and a politicised police force as tools for authoritarian and anti-democratic assaults on civil liberty and as tools to attack political opponents. The arrest of Tory MP and Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green in December 2008 after the leaking of embarrassing immigration statistics is a prime example (Thus passim). Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, was implicated. Michael Martin, Speaker of the House of Commons, authorised police to raid Green’s parliamentary office without a warrant on the grounds that the leak compromised national security. This week, Martin, a former Scottish Labour MP whose role is to uphold the probity, dignity and integrity of Parliament ‘impartially,’ shouted down Lib Dem MP Norman Baker and former Labour Minister Kate Hoey,  both of whom have campaigned for reform of MPs’ allowances in the past. Ms Hoey questioned the wisdom of the Speaker’s tactic of calling in the police again, this time to investigate the leaks to the Daily Telegraph which resulted in the tide of revelations of abuse of privilege and potential fraud by some members of all three parties. Misuse of police time and resources to hunt down a whistleblower could be construed in itself as a further abuse of privilege. Without the leak, the extent of endemic fiddling would have been obfuscated and suppressed. Indeed, Labour attempted earlier to exempt scrutiny of politicians’ expenses on the spurious grounds of national security.

Speaking on Radio 5 last Monday, another Thus favourite, the fragrant Alastair Campbell, Mandelson’s spinmeister Golem, editor of the Iraq War dodgy dossier (and thus an admirable moral commentator) said that as yet, the ‘C’ word had not been used in the context of this scandal. Another ‘C’ word could just as easily be employed in his context, but I digress. Let’s use the C word – not that one, the other one. Corruption.

Shadow Prime Minister David Cameron landed a great clunking fist on the grey jowls of Gordon Brown throughout this farrago, promising a full and transparent disclosure on how MPs spend their allowances, banning Tories from claiming for household furnishings and removing the whip from his aide, Andrew McKay MP. The Prime Minister followed suit by suspending former Agriculture Minister Elliot Morley for claiming £16,000 in mortgage payments after the loan had been repaid. Justice Minister Shaheed Malik (Sultan of ID Cards, by the way) reluctantly stepped down on 15 May, having forgotten to declare a vastly subsidised residence and buying a TV set for £1000.00. Labour peer ‘Lord’ Truscott was also forced to step down in a separate revelation, reported in the Sunday Times, that he, amongst others, had promised to influence legislation in the Upper House in return for cash. But Communities Secretary Hazel Blears (Thus passim) is still in situ, despite having been proven to have omitted to pay over £13,000 capital gains tax on a dubious ‘second home’ which she acquired on Members’ allowances and sold for a profit. It is perhaps more worrying that the UK Inland Revenue (HMRC) apparently ‘signed off’ on her tax return.

Westminster today is a vast necropolis of skeletons waiting to fall out of closets. Ten days of ‘revelations’ have curiously diminished the impact. Excesses have largely conformed to class stereotypes. Toffee-nosed Tories put in claims for draining moats, replumbing swimming pools and even the upkeep of a helipad. Labour expenses, with the exception of Mandelson’s garden and Tony Blair’s use of his allowance for a deposit on a £3.6 million Connaught Place mansion, have been more dreary – £800 plasma screen TVs, toilet seats and mock Tudor fascia for aspirational capitalist roaders. Cameron, whose expenses were apparently wholly above board, nevertheless expressed public abhorrence that members of his party could behave like – old fashioned Tories. By contrast, after his attempt to pre-empt independent investigation using the gruesome YouTube broadcast (inspired by Mr C word himself, Alastair Campbell) Brown, and leaderine-in-waiting, Harriet Harman, grasped at the defence that members were largely acting within the rules, thus the system, not its actors, was to blame. On this logic, a burglar might argue for acquittal on the grounds that it was the householder’s fault for leaving the window unlatched. 

When, and if, a comprehensive review of MPs’ expenses, remuneration and allowances is undertaken, it must be made explicit that any breach of not merely the rules, but the principle governing those rules will result in instant dismissal. Any breach of UK law, including tax avoidance, should be investigated, tried and punished according to UK civil and criminal law. Several UK MPs are already familiar with the process. Of the 646 members of the House of Commons, 84 have been arrested for drink driving in the last year, 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit, 29 have been accused of spouse abuse, 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits, 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges, 17 have directly or indirectly  bankrupted at least two businesses, 9 have been accused of writing bad cheques, 8 have been arrested for shoplifting, 7 have been arrested for fraud and 3 have done time for assault. 

John J Kelly

There is little I can add to the well-published facts surrounding the odious activities of the head of Downing St. Strategy and Planning Unit, Damian McBride, except to state the facts. He was one of Gordon Brown’s most senior and long-standing aides, a fellow Scot, known in media circles as ‘McPoison,‘ partly for his habit of sending vicious and intimidatory texts to journalists who failed to toe the party line. He was paid a ‘six figure’ salary by the UK taxpayer to smear detractors at the government’s behest. His resignation statement borders on the psychotic, opening with an attack on Tory blogger Paul Staines, (Guido Fawkes) for revealing the plot to disseminate vicious slurs on the Shadow Prime Minister and Chancellor, implying that Staines should have kept quiet about libellous emails intended to illegally and maliciously distort public opinion of HM Official opposition. He then claims that the idea originated with co-conspirator Derek Draper, as a counter to unspecified anti-Labour slurs. The emails suggested using libelous and unfounded accusations that the Shadow Prime Minister had a sexually transmitted disease (he and his wife recently lost a child) and sexual allegations against the Shadow Chancellor, amongst others. The Prime Minister, usually quick to claim the moral high ground, has not come forward with a statement of condemnation. Alan Johnson, Health Secretary, while admitting that the allegations were ‘disgusting,’ attempted to make light of the issue on BBC Radio 4 this morning, denying any responsibility on the part of McBride’s employer. (In passing, it has been alleged elsewhere that Karl Milner, another former Brown aide, former political lobbyist and implicated with Draper in the 1998 ‘Lobbygate’ scandal – see below – may have handled donations for Johnson’s Deputy Leadership campaign).

McBride puts his fellow conspirator firmly in the frame. “When Derek Draper originally suggested using a website to compete with the kind of material seen regularly on the Guido Fawkes blog, he asked me in a personal capacity to write up some of the stories doing the rounds in Westminster. Derek and I decided in the end that this website was the wrong thing to do, and that Derek should not take his online efforts down to the level of Guido Fawkes and his Tory backers.” (McBride resignation statement). Draper, a former aide to twice-banished ‘Lord’ Peter Mandelson, was himself disgraced in the 1998 ‘Lobbygate’ scandal, where he claimed that he could facilitate access to New Labour insiders and cabinet figures for a fee. He suffered a breakdown, went to California via The Priory, gained an MA in Clinical Psychology (though not at Berkeley as he implied on his CV) and re-invented himself as a BACP accredited psychotherapist. This latest backsliding suggests that he may be in need of some serious supervision.

Recently Draper re-entered the world of politics with his LabourList website. His own ‘apologies and regrets‘ blog on this website today shows little in the way of apology and insufficient ‘regret’. In proposing that we ‘draw a line’ under this ‘silly’ episode, while repeating Green’s ‘excuse’ that the emails should never have seen the light of day, he omits to mention that his putative vehicle for smear, “RedRag” is still a registered domain (listed under an accommodation address). While he and Green have accused unnamed Tory grandees of supporting Guido Fawkes, he has repeatedly claimed that LabourList is completely independent of New Labour. Yet its content unambiguously supports the party line and boasts of inside track information. As for smears, recent examples of its top-level agenda-setting stories in the national interest include a story about Tory Transport spokesman John Leech MP forgetting to renew his car tax. Draper has repeatedly sidestepped questions as to who supports/endorses and/or contributes to LabourList, and whether they are part of the incumbent government and its fellow travellers.

The third recipient of sordid emails, Charlie Whelan, was a sweary former spin doctor (aide to Gordon Brown, no less) under the Blair-led Government, who ‘stepped down’ after the 1999 Mandelson home loan scandal, and is now Press Officer of the Unite trade union. All three have strong links to Labour/Brown and/or Mandelson. One was on the government payroll in a senior official advisory capacity. It beggars belief that the country should ‘draw a line’ under this conspiracy to sink British politics to the gutter levels which did so much damage to democracy in the US. Brown needs to issue a statement of unqualified condemnation and apology to the Conservatives and to the country. Anything less is an admission of complicity, and failure to do so should be seen in its own context. In passing, it is obviously and wholly coincidental that the recent resurgence of slimeball spin doctoring and dark arts, which Brown vowed to end when he became Prime Minister, appears to have coincided with the reappearance in High Office of the spotless Peter Mandelson, who allegedly ‘poured poison’ about Gordon Brown into the ear of George Osborne on the boat of a Russian Oligarch (Yachtgate) in an incident which led to Osborne’s political discomfiture, three months before Mandelson returned to government. So successful was his black propaganda that nobody asked what the EU Trade Commissioner was doing on Oleg Deripaska‘s yacht, where he allegedly stayed for a week.

John J Kelly

Thus predicts that reluctantly, the shrinking viole(n)t Campbell will enter the fray and snuggle up next to Mandy in the Lords, with the sincerity of a Spice Girl pushed on stage for a reunion gig. It is also odds-on that more propaganda masquerading as comment such as the longwinded, wonky, badly-argued cant which miraculously appeared recently in my former magazine, Prospect (however did that happen?) will trumpet themselves to general apathy. 

Meanwhile, under its relatively new director, wannabe kingmaker Richard Reeves (another ex-hack) of formerly leftish think tank, Demos, has taken another turn to the muddy centre and has invited ‘University’ of Cumbria academic, god botherer and ‘Red Tory’ cheerleader Phillip (sic) Blond to orchestrate a programme of ‘debate’ into  ’Progressive Conservatism.’ (The first question I’d ask is whether the term is an oxymoron or simply moronic). Keynote speeches will be delivered on January 22 by David Cameron, crossbencher Frank Field, Oliver Letwin and the ubiquitous Will Hutton of the Work Foundation (another oxymoron?) for which Richard Reeve once ‘worked’. There is allegedly a lot of money around in the think tank world, ahead of the election, which we are told isn’t happening (it is), despite all this jockeying for the centre ground. I’ll gladly head up a study group to ask: why? Nobody outside Islington and Notting Hill cares what these drooling halfwit spinmonkeys think, or if they think at all. 

John J Kelly

By John J. Kelly

In a move unprecedented in Europe since Martin Luther said the Pope wasn’t a Catholic, German Finance Minister Peter Steinbrueck called Gordon Brown’s “crass Keynesianism” breathtaking – but not in a good way. Following the rude absence of Mrs Merkel, the German Chancellor who couldn’t be bothered to turn up to Gordon’s Coalition of the Borrowers last Monday (Thus passim) another Hun, this time Steffen Kampeter, wee-weed on the recovery plans by stating that Brown’s audacious Micawber Plan (Thus Passim) showed a “failure of Labour Policy.” Sarkozy, meanwhile, dapper Neo-Liberal French footie friend of Gordon, is erring on the side of financial incaution. The issues are well summarised here in a Bloomberg Special Report.

I hold in my hand a message from the German Chancellor

Conservative Shadow Chancellor George Osborne – who nobody cares about anyway after his boating misadventures – piped up that “there is a growing international consensus that Brown’s borrowing binge will make the recession worse, the recovery more difficult and burden future generations with a mountain of debt.” Labour Foreign Secretary David Miliband – who nobody cared about after he failed to unseat Brown and was pictured with a banana last October but is now rehabilitated as Mandelson’s hopfrog – said on the BBC Today Programme that it was all a German internal spat (unrelated to Eton footwear). Mrs Merkel was behind Brown’s Micawber Plan to urge Europe to splurge a quarter trillion Euros on tax cuts and public spending, funded, presumably, from the Planet Zanussi. He didn’t say just how far behind it she was, though.

Exactly what part of Schadenfreude don't you understand, Herr Bleistift Schwanz?

Mrs Merkel announced earlier that no big decisions would be taken about the level of state intervention in the German banking crisis until January, estimated subvention at around Eur 32 billion over two years and ruled out tax cuts. The world money markets, clearly in awe of Brown even if the Valkyrie was resisting his charm, signalled their ringing endorsement. Sterling plunged to a record low against the Euro, which was hailed as a triumph by the madly spinning Miliband who declared that a weak pound would help exports. True, if the UK had anything left to export apart from bankrupt Woolworths Pick ‘n Mix boiled sweets and old MFI furniture (THUS passim). It will be very bad for UK imports of just about everything else, but crucially of energy, denominated in dollars, which the UK, like everyone else, sort of needs in order to keep the lights on and the printing presses rolling at the Royal Mint.

It's Mr Micawber again, vying for EU Finance Minister's post

European insiders recall that during his time as UK Chancellor, Brown’s modus operandi was to turn up at EU Finance Meetings, read a prepared speech then take off his headphones and ignore the debate as he got on with his homework. He’d put on the phones for the closing speech and exit, assuming consensus around the UK position. This endearing trait has not been forgotten. Brown, meanwhile, reiterated this week that he had no intention of considering Britain’s entry into the European currency, a peculiar message from the self-appointed leader of Europe’s latter day Marshall Plan. As a worrying postscript, BBC Economics Editor Robert Peston reported that HBOS, which the UK government bailed out in September, has incurred an extra £3 billion in losses against unsecured loans in the past three months. Santander, Spanish owner of Bradford and Bingley and Abbey, two more UK financial sector strugglers, also announced huge job cuts in the UK as of January.

Meanwhile the UK credit card companies, who are gleefully charging an average of 14.9% interest on purchases and 23.9% on cash advances, and who are mainly owned by the banks, ruled out passing on Bank of England interest rate cuts to their customers, though they did say they would give distressed borrowers 100 yards head start before sending the attack dogs after them. Stick to your guns, Missus Merkel. Alles is far from Klaar. We really don’t want another Weimar. Look what happened last time.

I couldn't possibly comment except to say that the Tories are smokey spinmonkeys who go on boats with Ruskies, unlike me

You can read more about all this from much better sources such as Silobreaker, which reported the collapse of the case on Monday. Ms Murrer herself was on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour today. In another extraordinary and completely unrelated coincidence, Peter Mandelson, the scrapping spinmeister general New Labour peer and Business Minister, declared on BBC Radio 4′s Today Programme that the Conservatives were within their rights to call for a debate on the Damian Green affair, but that the ‘alleged’ fact that the Immigration Office junior civil servant who leaked over 21 pieces of information to the Shadow Minister was canvassing for a job with the Tories. he said the same on Sky News: ”I understand the anger expressed by some MPs because it touches on what they see as their rights and privileges. ‘I also have to say I think that for many Conservatives, it is a self-serving smokescreen, behind which to hide their own apparent collusion with a Home Office official who was allegedly systematically leaking Home Office papers to the Conservative Party, in order to pursue his own personal political ambition.’ Mandelson, who is not a member of the House of Commons, added: ‘I would like to know from the Conservatives whether their frontbench and their leader knowingly colluded with that civil servant in riding a coach and horses not only through the Civil Service code but also through the law.’

These allegations themselves, though legally qualified, are deliberately tantamount to accusing the Tories of breaking the law – or ‘aiding and abetting’. I observed the interesting coincidence of Mandelson’s re-emergence and the outbreak of renewed parliamentary violence earlier (Thus passim). Today’s masterful intervention makes the link explicit.

The most striking and relevant coincidence through all this smoke is that Damian Green has been threatened with the same charge as Ms Murrer: ‘aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office.’ Lord Mandelson’s musings now go further. By implying that ‘their frontbench and their leader may have knowingly colluded,’ in an attempt to deflect heat away from what is almost certainly turning out to be a serious constitutional crisis, he has almost certainly raised the stakes to Defcon 2. Thus has heard, meanwhile, that Jacqui Smith has ordered an investigation of the police investigation. By the police, of course. 

I’ll be relieved to leave this subject and get back to the real world. There is smoke and fire on all sides, but the overall implications of these curious coincidences are valid: either the police have gone unilaterally  troppo, someone is urging them to go troppo, the government is having a series of senior moments, or this is part of a dangerous, concerted attack upon HM Opposition to deflect attention from evident failings of the Immigration Department which may have implications for National Security. Allegedly.