Yesterday, Wednesday the 25th of March, was a fascinating day in British politics.

1. Harriet Harman finally went down in flames as a potential replacement for Gordon Brown as leader of the Labour party, ably assisted by an in-form William Hague, who seems to have regained his appetite for the battle.

2. Gordon Brown’s mediocre, very pro-EU, speech to the European parliament on Tuesday, was brilliantly shot down by Daniel Hannan, the ablest Tory not in the Shadow Cabinet. The intervention is now a hit on YouTube.

3. The disgraceful treatment of naughty-boy banker Fred Goodwin, allied to the walking-dead half-life of the banking system, woke many up to what I have thought for months, that we’ve missed a golden opportunity to save them.

Let’s deal with each in turn:

At PMQs, the two deputies stood in for the leaders as Gordon Brown engineered another self-congratulatory photoshoot for himself in New York — a June election is looking very possible right now.

William Hague, cool and in total command of the House, repeatedly put Harman on the spot by asking her the simplest of unanswerable questions: “Do you agree with the Governor of the Bank of England that we can’t afford another fiscal stimulus?”

There are endless nuances and potential pitfalls all around this topic, so a Yes or No was never on the cards. Harriet, true to form, blustered and bored her way through a tangle of irrelevant statistics and half-formed ideas, leaving an impression of being comprehensively out of her depth.

Ministers on either side of her, Jacqui Smith and Douglas Alexander, watched appalled, though gamely nodded their heads as fatuity followed fatuity. It was wretched for Labour backbenchers as Tories shouted “More!” each time she spoke.

Hapless Harman is emblematic of the state of the whole party. Directionless, deserted by its leader playing his own game, and totally demoralized. There’s no way back from this.

The second incident, Brown’s tedious speech to the EU parliament was brilliantly dissected by another exceptionally able Conservative, Daniel Hannan — why isn’t this man on the front bench at Westminster instead of languishing in solitary over the water?

Hannan’s fusilade of oratorical denunciation and controlled anger, hit the spot so perfectly, the clip has become a must-see on YouTube. Watch it here.

His quip that Brown is like a “Brezhnev era apparatchik” reflects what Syntagma has been saying for months.

The third occurrence was the attack on the Edinburgh home of Fred the Shred, a former buddy of fairweather Brown, who was scapegoated by him in the recent collapse of both men’s policies.

Since government ministers and civil servants have no idea how to run banks, and the well-meaning figures drafted in to do that simply don’t have the experience to turn them round in the timeframe specified: i.e. yesterday, the only real avenue of escape has been bricked up.

The obvious solution at the outset was to summon the bankers to a top level dressing down in Downing Street and present them with an ultimatum:

“You have two options: go to prison for a very long time, or sort out the mess yourselves, whatever it takes. Fail and we will destroy you, succeed and you can retire gracefully. There is no other alternative.”

Very Francis Urquhart, I know, but needs must.

We could now be looking at a very different banking system had that step been taken.

We live in interesting, if frugal, times.

Update: If you would like to comment on Gordon Brown’s tacky plan to butcher the British Constitution by changing the Act of Settlement for electoral advantage, go to our sister site Royal Anecdotes

John Evans

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