Google slipped up yesterday. The search engine highlighted a story that Michael Jackson died in 2007.

Oops, wrong Michael Jackson.

So who was this posthumous star enjoying his 15 minutes of fame? According to Wikipedia:

“Michael Jackson was born in Wetherby, West Yorkshire. He went to King James’s School in Almondbury and became a journalist, most notably in Edinburgh where he first encountered whisky. On his return to London he briefly edited the advertising trade journal Campaign.

“Jackson became famous in beer circles in 1977 when his book The World Guide To Beer was published. This was later translated into more than ten languages and is still considered to be one of the most fundamental books on the subject.”

Ah, sanity!

Rest in peace, Michael Jackson, journalist and beer lover.

On the Today programme last week there was a throwaway line from a presenter that went like this: “The Foreign Office wanted to do something about Iran, but was overruled by Brussels”.

No gasp of indignation followed, no protest at the disastrous state of Britain’s foreign policy, they simply moved on to the next item.

Your diarist is made of sterner stuff. Lord Palmerston sprang instantly to mind. What would he make of the once mighty British Foreign Office being slapped down and “overruled” by a provincial town in Belgium?

We all know the answer to that. A gunboat would have been dispatched to Ostende and an immediate grovelling retraction obtained.

In reality, little David Milband, Foreign Secretary and heir to Michael Portillo, waved his banana and Britain was humiliated.

The truth is, whenever Labour are in power, the country acts as if it lost the Second World War rather than won it.

Let us hope that William Hague, biographer of William Pitt — the great war leader — inherits something of the Victorian spirit when it comes to British independence and projection of will.

If so, he could go down as one the great British Foreign Secretaries.

In the same area, Peter Hitchens wrote a thought-provoking blogpost last week in the Mail’s website.

It outlined in some detail why Britain is stuck in the sterile structures of the European Union and why the country should leave. Here’s a taster:

“It was undoubtedly a mistake on British terms. We gained nothing economically or politically by it, losing what remained of our special Commonwealth trading links, losing our territorial waters, our foreign policy independence and our ability to make our own arrangements for regulating and subsidising our industry and agriculture. We also lost our political independence, and control over our own borders.”

Brown’s and Miliband’s further surrender of Britain’s foreign policy over the past year is eloquent testimony to the proposition, held by Syntagma, Hitchens, and a majority of the population, that Britain is being wiped off the map by the sort of continental power it fought for centuries to stop developing in Europe.

Joining in hasn’t worked, only by leaving will we regain the power of action.

Watching Ed Balls (roughly Education Secretary in the government) on Andrew Marr this morning was a lesson in all that is wrong with New Labour.

The message never faltered: Tory cuts were the the biggest danger facing the nation; Labour “investment”, plus yet more tinkering with the school system, is the way forward.

Considering that few people watch such a show at 9am on a Sunday morning unless they possess a sophisticated knowledge of current affairs and politics, pushing the much-rebutted “line to take” doesn’t really make sense.

Balls’s body language was equally bizarre. Holding his hands apart and parallel with each other, he continually moved them, first this way, then that. Like a fisherman claiming his catch was a whopper, there was an element of fantasy about the whole performance — a whopper indeed.

But the worst bit was when he claimed the Tories would cut spending to fund inheritance tax breaks for a few very rich people.

If memory serves, George Osborne promised to cut inheritance tax at the Conservatice conference just when Brown was planning a snap General Election nearly two years ago.

The substantial and sudden swing to the Conservatives in the opinion polls forced him to scrap his plans. The following month, Brown ordered his Chancellor to adopt similar measures in the Pre-Budget report.

So, another lie from Labour. Do they now have much support left among the regular audience for the Andrew Marr show?

It seems unlikely.

The Queen is said to have warned the government against mixing up the celebrations for her Diamond Jubilee in the summer of 2012 with the multiple shenanigans of the London Olympics.

One can see her reasoning. The Games are currently set to cost a whopping £10 billion, and that figure will undoubtedly rise.

HM wants a much less extravagant celebration, aware that the effects of the continuing depression will still be with us. Wisely, she has called in Lord Sterling, former head of P&O, who masterminded both her Silver and Golden Jubilees, and knows her mind.

The fact is, the Conservatives will then be in power nationally, and the Tory Mayor of London will be in a re-election year. I’m sure they can arrange matters so that both milestone events will be totally free of “political correctness” and electioneering.

Eh, Boris? Eh, Dave?

The word “globalization” is still widely used as a touchstone of modernity and wealth-creation. The Left, in particular, has fabricated its own version, “progressive internationalism”, for which read, “international socialism”.

The vast apparatus constructed since WW2 in support of international trade and relationships, is just that, Marxism without nationality — and therefore without democracy.

If globalization is so good for us then, why have international banks retreated back to their own countries now there’s a financial war on?

In Britain, almost all lending by foreign banks has ceased, leaving damaged local institutions to pick up the pieces. So far, they remain like wounded bears, confined to their caves.

The point is, if globalization only works during market highs, why stake so much on it? Every intelligent commentator knows the framework will be untenable during prolonged recessions?

The reason is that the present global superstructure of institutions creates a false picture of the benefits, while ignoring the downsides.

Players who should never have been in the field are being stuffed with taxpayers’ cash they can ill afford. The “carry trade” is a good example of what can happen. International bubbles are much worse than national ones.

Without the existing infrastructure, only the best and ablest would cross borders, and they would not expect bailouts during hard times. They would generally be more successful in the long term.

True to form, current economic conditions have not stopped Gordon Brown floating a scheme for another £60 billion a year to underpin yet more “global warming” funds for inadequate companies and greedy politicians. How will that help the British economy?

We need to treat anything global as a field for those who are strictly on their own, and not tacitly promise they will never be allowed to fail.

And finally, back to Ed Balls.

Can’t you just imagine the scene at the Cooper-Balls’s breakfast table. Ed is trying to get the children to eat up their breakfast. With his hands held six inches apart, he coaxes, “This is how much I want you to eat.”

Yvette leans forward earnestly, “It’s the right thing to do.”

Ed continues, “Then you’ll all grow up to be just like daddy.”

Yvette hesitates, examining her husband’s bulgy eyes and manic grin.”

“Time for school, kids.”

“Hold on, Yvette, I was just about to explain neo-classical endogenous growth theory. They really should know about it. … Where are you going?”

John Evans

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Bank holiday mornings are usually dreary affairs, endured to the sounds of shrieking children and rain on the windowpanes.

This morning, as compensation, we have a few zingy articles in the press to cheer us up. Over at The Guardian, Jackie Ashley refers to David Cameron’s exceptional “chutzpah” — does she mean chutney?

When was the last time such positive thoughts for a Tory leader pinged from the bullet banks of the old Manchester teeth-grinder? I mean the paper, not Jackie Ashley.

So, let’s dig liberally into the chutney and hope that chutzpah is enough to win the next General Election.

I thought Dave looked a little chubby on Andrew Marr yesterday. Maybe he’s at the chutney too.

Boris Johnson was also heard moving in the undergrowth again at The Telegraph. Adding to the din of calls for a swift General Election he cites the dreadful state of legislation spewed out during the last 12 years. We need a House of Rebels, he writes, and, by implication, not shoppers and diners-out.

Why do many Tories sound so Cromwellian now? Aren’t they supposed to be Cavaliers, not Roundheads? Boris is a born Cavalier. A feather in his cap would utterly transform him.

But he’s right. We do need Parliamentarians for a complex technological age: MPs who will cut up badly drafted law and hurl it back at a slipshod Executive, forcing it to do better. Perhaps some Eton schoolmasters should be drafted in.

The floor of the House needs the capability to overcome government when it underperforms. That means a much higher quality of MP. Falling back on Esther Rantzen and Joanna Lumley would be total desperation. How good has Glenda Jackson been? Or Gyles Brandreth? Or that Leftie Shakespearean actor who went to Brussels?

Horses for courses. Ask any bookie.

But Derby winners, please.

Since we’re all in a rather bilious mood of rebellion against our leaders, here are two possible reforms to Government off the top of my head.

1. American Cabinets are not drawn from Congress as a rule. They are normally appointed from distinguished experts and public servants. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, for example, was at the New York Federal Reserve before the call came from Washington. Like us, there’s probably not the talent or expertise among career politicians on Capitol Hill.

Would they want to mop up 100 or so of the people who vote the money and pass laws for everyone? The “separation of powers” is bigger in the States than here, although I believe we invented the concept. Maybe that’s what’s gone wrong.

Gordon Brown tried a similar idea with his GOATS (government of all the talents). One by one the goatlings have fallen by the wayside, usually for lacking political savvy. Lord Myners slipped up over Fred the Shred’s pension. Others have left to take up motor racing, or got caught out for being human — a dreadful sin these days.

Digby Jones was probably the best, but he was stuck in some minor post as Prince Andrew’s bag-carrier. One suspects Brown’s heavy-handed incompetence destroyed the exercise.

Cabinet Ministers, especially Secretaries of State, must be selected from the best we have. They should also be vetted by Parliament before they are confirmed in office.

Prime Ministers must not have it all their own way. Often, as with Brown and Blair, they are the blockages that keep excellence out of government.

2. Why should leaders in the Commons choose the people who will revise their legislation in the Lords? Let’s remove the government’s power to stuff the second chamber with its placemen.

If you were up on a murder charge, you’d be astonished if you could choose anyone you wanted for the jury.

Improvements, such as these, need to be made now, when politicians are weak. The tragedy is, the old system ensures only they can make the necessary changes.

And turkeys don’t voluntarily jump into ovens at Christmas.

Gorbals Mick, otherwise known as the Speaker of the House of Commons, is almost history now.

But do you remember the Gorbals Die-hards? They were in a different class from the old black-robed sheet-metal worker.

You don’t recall them? Maybe Dickson McCunn will jog your memory. A retired Glasgow grocer, High Class, of course, Dickson — in his sixties — was the self-appointed leader of the Die-hards, who were a group of young boy tearaways, led by their Chieftan, Dougal. I wonder how that juxtaposition would play in today’s climate?

No, then how about Huntingtower? Or The House of the Four Winds?

Last chance: John Buchan.

Yes, I hear you shout — a bit late, if you ask me.

I left out the third book in the series, Castle Gay, because it’s taken on a wholly different meaning since Buchan’s day. More Graham Norton than Richard Hannay.

I mention the Die-hards because not everything narrow, puce-faced and boring came out of the Gorbals. The novels are wonderful confections of adventure, fights to the death, swashbuckling characters, and the kind of wild possibilities that appeal to teenage boys (and many older ones) almost everywhere.

It would be an interesting experiment to try out Huntingtower, written in 1922, on a modern comp-educated class of teens. Once they got over the very different morality and beliefs of the post-WW1 world, I’m sure the exhilaration of the story, far-fetched as it is, would grip them. After all how far does Harry Potter demand the suspension of disbelief?

You can download the Gutenburg version of the novel here.

I picked up my copies from a secondhand bookshop while still at school. They were very tattered but part of that great orange Penguin series that can still be found on sale all over the country.

I mention all this because every time I see Gorbals Mick presiding over the House, I think what a disapointment he would be to Wee Jaikie and the other Die-hards.

One of the great journalistic duels is taking place in the Business section of the Sunday Telegraph.

In the blue corner: Ambrose “Mr Deflation” Evans-Pritchard. In the red corner: Liam “Mr Inflation” Halligan.

Both are brilliant journalists and masters of their field. They differ in their assessment of the current economic circumstances, especially for the United Kingdom.

Ambrose admits to being “tortured by self-doubt” over his analysis. Liam is ruggedly certain of his.

Ambrose believes “two-thirds of the world will be in deflation by July”. Liam points to the climbing oil price which will wipe out all the stimulus effects of quantitative easing.

I suspect that both are right. Some parts of the world will fall into deflation — many countries already have. But inflation is the underlying wealth-destroying genie that has, once again, popped out of the bottle, thanks to Central Banks and politicians covering their backs against a 1930s-style Armageddon.

It may be a few years down the road, though, and deflation has to be fought now, as the Bank of England implies by its continuing policy of buying gilts. But it will let rip eventually.

As always, it’s a case of Up-To-A-Pointism. We are nowhere near out of the woods yet.

Once again the European Union is interfering in the running of the British state.

Not content with forcing us to adopt the useless mercury-filled light bulbs prescribed by them, we are now expected to switch from Watts — named after a fine Scottish gentleman — to “lumens”, a continental concoction that means nothing to the British.

Soon a size 9 shoe will become a 43, calories will be “joules”, after a long-forgotten Frenchman, and the English Channel will be called the German Waterway.

Why do these things happen? Because our politicians are not worth the spit they lick on their freebie postage stamps.

John Evans

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Charles Clarke is right, Ed Balls should be sacked. But for different reasons than the former Home and Education Secretary had in mind.

An educational desert?

Only totalitarian regimes control every aspect of education down to the smallest details of the curriculum. The most successful governments are content with the slimmest of oversight roles.

After the war, when British State education was a lot better than it is now, government interference was minimal. I read somewhere that the Ministry of Education was housed in a small lean-to building attached to one end of Waterloo Station. Within its tiny portals were housed a handful of civil servants and a Minister. That nano crew managed the teaching of more than nine-tenths of children in the United Kingdom.

Compare that frugal regime with the overflowingly voluptuous, wasteful and ineffectual operation we have now under Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children and Anything Else We Can Blow Your Money On.

So, yes, Charles, let’s send Balls to the knacker’s yard, but let’s also dispatch a scout to find a suitable lean-to at Waterloo Station.

Preferably one not overrun by dossers, winos and crackheads, of course.

Mark Almond in The Times:

“Turkey needs the EU less and less. Since it has a customs union with the EU many Turkish companies have anyhow got what they want from EU membership — access to markets — while millions of Turkish farmers know that the Common Agricultural Policy will never featherbed them as it once protected French farmers.”

Why can’t our political class see that too?

So pigs are not that calamitous after all. The latest version of the ‘flu virus — grotesquely labelled Swine Flu — is now being downgraded by the puffed-up World Health Organization.

After a week of global mayhem caused by its theatrical raising of the “threat level” to a starry 5 — the flu world’s equivalent of 10 on the Richter Scale — we can all breathe safely again in public. Even while our fellow citizens are sneezing their way through the hay fever season.

Gordon Brown rode the publicity horse, naturally. “We have enough antiviral drugs for half the population and we’re reordering millions more face masks and doses of Tamiflu.” Phew, SuperGordo’s on the job. We’re all saved from the pig disease.

It was good then to see cheery old Postman Pat (Alan Johnson), on the Andrew Marr show yesterday, exclaim, “It’s only flu, for heaven’s sake.”

Now there’s a Health Secretary to die for.

He’s not Prime Ministerial material, alas, but it’s satisfying that some politicians of the old British school remain in place, especially among the aliens of NuLabour.

Keep the bon mots coming, Alan.

Continuing with our rehabilitation of pigs after a bad week for our little pink friends, new research suggests that the best cure for a hangover is a bacon sandwich. I’m not making this up.

Researchers at the University of Newcastle, home of the legendary Newky Broon beer, have made this important discovery.

Elin Roberts of the university’s Centre for Life reveals all, “Food doesn’t soak up the alcohol but it does increase your metabolism helping you deal with the after-effects of over indulgence. So food will often help you feel better.

Bread is high in carbohydrates and bacon is full of protein, which breaks down into amino acids. Bingeing on alcohol depletes neurotransmitters too, but bacon contains a high level of aminos which tops these up, giving you a clearer head.”

So a visit to a greasy spoon after a night on the razzle is just what the doctor may now order. A bacon sarnie, washed down with a pint of ebony tea in a cracked mug, is at the cutting edge of medical science.

Who says elegant dining is a thing of the past?

Have you ever wondered why some politicians consider themselves Prime Ministerial material when virtually the entire country does not?

Take the case of the two music hall acts of British politics:

Harriet Harman (stage name: Mad Hattie Harperson), Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and presiding genius behind the retro (circa 1917 Russia) Equalities Bill.

And Boris Johnson (stage name: Buffoon Boris) the colourful Mayor of London.

Hattie, who apparently believes six impossible things before breakfast, is, in reality, a hardline, hatchet-faced, militant feminist whose every instinct is to drive out and destroy any sign of excellence, or spark of talent, the nation may harbour. Her own yawning lack of exceptionality is an indication of how she would like us all to be.

This morning she denied she would challenge Gordon Brown for the leadership, after campaigning openly and behind closed doors for months. Lack of courage, plus a dearth of any sort of ability for the job, rules her out in any case. Self-knowledge, Ms Harriet!

As for Boris, he’s certainly upped his performance lately and downed his buffoonery. He remains a highly educated and intelligent member of the political elite. Recently, he seemed to be challenging David Cameron for the job of Prime Minister before Cameron had even entered Downing Street.

Did he suppose that the Conservatives — up to 20 points ahead in the polls — were going to ditch one old Etonian for another just a year before an election is due? Sometimes high intelligence is as big a handicap as the lack of it. Boris should ask Hattie about that.

Charles Moore, writing in this week’s Spectator, suggests the difference between them is that Cameron was an Oppidian at Eton, while Boris a mere Colleger.

Eton a hotbed of class distinction? Harriet really does have a job on her hands.

According to Ben Brogan’s new blog over at the Telegraph, William Hague is making waves behind the scenes.

The Conservative’s Shadow Foreign Secretary is preparing the ground for a quick referendum on the European Union Constitution aka the Lisbon Treaty:

William Hague, we know, presented Sir Peter Ricketts at the Foreign Office with a series of clear requests that left little doubt about what’s in store. The head of the diplomatic service was asked to prepare a Bill for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty that must be ready for publication within days of the Tories taking over.

Now that’s the best news I’ve heard all week.

John Evans

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Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, is an affable cove, argumentative in a jolly sort of way, but with a hidden seriousness often overlooked.

He is frequently right in his assertions, occasionally he goes badly wrong.

He’s at it again, arguing for an old-fashioned version of free trade in the face of a worldwide downturn and a rush to shore up national economies and infrastructures long neglected by obsessions with global solutions.

Bring back the status quo ante, cries Boris, in the teeth of a gale of rage against the tattered remnants of the ancien regime.

His article in this morning’s Daily Telegraph promotes the classical case for free trade: specialization (a result of what’s called “comparative advantage”) and an acceptance of a dependency on others for a wide range of the necessities of life.

The UK, for example, has specialized in financial services in the City of London and elsewhere, while allowing a massive dependency on the rest of the world for manufactured goods and agriculture.

Hold on, wasn’t Britain once the “workshop of the world”? Didn’t we produce some of the greatest agricultural produce on the face of the earth? Weren’t these skills central in pulling us through two world wars in the 20th century?

Explain then why they were sacrificed to the make-believe world of finance, which absorbed many our best graduates, turning them into barrow-boy traders, or designers of financial gambling instruments that inflated the entire planet with unpayable debt?

Is that what Boris means by free trade?

And here’s another conundrum: why have British politicians, especially Brown and Blair, deceived the public into signing away national control over critical aspects of life and commerce to the most unresponsive and cack-handed organization ever conceived in the world’s long history? I refer, of course, to the elephantine European Union.

Is that free trade, Boris? If it is, there’s a large majority in this country that would prefer not to have anything to do with it.

The fact is, free trade, like all freedoms, has to be designed around the grain of human nature, not the mental machinations of policy wonks. It starts with the individual, not a bureaucratic oligarchy.

Does anyone believe the crackpot system we have had across the world, and in Europe, for the past decade has covered itself in glory? Most of it was built up during the “hunkering down together” period after World War II, when legislators were terrified of further wars.

Ninety percent of that system has proved itself redundant and ready to be scrapped. “Free trade” has become synonymous with maintaining this failed superstructure.

The next British Government, which may at some stage include Boris Johnson, should heed public rage at the restrictions of the hated European settlement. A loose trade association is all Britain will require in the century ahead.

And what about democracy, Mr Mayor? How is it that each treaty we sign, each organization we join, hands power on a plate to international bureaucrats at the expense of the very people in whose name this sacrifice is made? The rootless sherpas of world politics and trade have no knowledge of local needs or cultural preferences. Peter Mandelson is a perfect example.

The most dangerous pressure cooker for politicians of all stripes is a build up of anger and frustration by large numbers of people who believe their voices are not being heard. That’s how revolutions start. We should have long outgrown that primitive tendency.

Free trade is easily done if you have something worth selling and the other chap has something worth buying. The big bloc approach masks the necessity to develop products and services that are useful to others.

There is also a vital requirement to have a balanced economy that is not brought down by the collapse of a single sector. Cuba’s reliance on one crop, sugar, is a classic example. Britain’s lop-sided specialism in financial services and house swapping will be viewed in the same light in future.

David Cameron will be at his strongest when he first comes into power. He should use that power to ease the UK out of the EU and into an Associate position on its perimeter. He will not be forgiven if he fudges that essential step.

John Evans

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Well, that’s the Olympics over for another four years.

What! I hear you say, it’s only just starting? Are you having a laugh?

In modern times, the opening ceremony has become the Olympic Games. The rest is substandard minority sports played out by complete unknowns on behalf of various pharmaceutical companies.

A few score cyclists riding round and round a velodrome — how many know what a velodrome is? The Tour de France is a much greater spectacle.

Meanwhile, half a hundred rowers pull their way down a canal in a park. I don’t think I can stifle this yawn for much longer.

And all those athletes running round a track in pursuit of the big advertising contacts a gold medal will bring. Everyone wants to be a model these days. Whatever happened to real men?

For this, China has turned its capital Beijing into an armed camp, ringed by their version of Patriot missiles, just in case someone somewhere tries to disrupt the event. They have, but it’s in Georgia and it’s the Russians.

I have to admit though, the opening ceremony was without doubt the greatest show ever put on anywhere on the planet at any time. It wasn’t the most tinglingly enjoyable, like a big Royal event in London, but it had more Wow factor than any other comparable bash. It was massive, unremitting — it lasted four hours — and had a machine-like precision that was quite mesmerising.

Pity poor London which has to match that in just four years from now. Can a capital city every bit as ancient as the former Peking dust off its old bones and produce a show as scintillating as the new Emperors of the Middle Kingdom have done?

That is to miss the point entirely. Britain is not a command State like China. The English don’t go in for that kind of mass synchronized eventing. Anyone who has watched our football team knows how unsynchronized we can be.

We’re a nation of individualists who rather resent being pushed around by our rulers. Besides, we are more than a little ironic and prefer our patriotism laced with a great deal of humour. Think Gilbert and Sullivan and you’re on the page.

The problem London has is that its Olympics is in the hands of the same team that brought you the Millennium Dome, the Great Wall of Fire across the Thames that fizzled out like a damp squib, the Millennium Bridge that wobbled so much people were seasick crossing it, and a display meant to highlight 2000 years of British history that included a troupe of Brazilian dancers, snowboarding, an Irish presenter, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Way too much irony!

I refer, of course, to those prize Charlies, New Labour.

Tessa Jowell is the Olympics Minister. This is a lady who has been Minister for “Fun” for donkeys’ years and was demoted to her present position a year ago. She has never run anything in her entire life apart from bits of bureaucratic machinery. Naturally, the cost of Olympic contracts is rising by the week.

Her husband was allegedly involved in bribery scandals with the Italian Prime Minister, and such was the fuss, Tessa had to separate from him, while denying all knowledge of his activities.

Thankfully, London now has a real showman as its Mayor, one Boris Johnson, a chap who knows a thing or two about irony and has actually appeared on game shows. We should also have a different government in 2010, when David Cameron is almost certain to be Prime Minister — he’s 25 percent ahead in the key marginal seats.

Perhaps the most important point is that London can’t be taken over in the way that Beijing has. It’s essentially hundreds of small villages where the old fields in between have been built up over centuries. Many boroughs retain their villagey character. The Olympics will practically disappear when plonked down in that rather dismal part of London hollowed out for the even more depressing stadiums and fun arenas. Like the Dome, there will be no sign of it anywhere that tourists actually go.

I would like to be able to summon up more enthusiasm for this project than I can, but the Olympic Games has become a crashing bore. Only a bigger and more spectacular opening ceremony each time masks the fact that the sport is a sham and the nuts and bolts rusted beyond repair.

The irony is, London is just not capable of that kind of opening show. Amid the disappointment, we may finally realize that this overblown extravaganza is simply not worth disrupting our lives for.

Confusion in the ranks seems to be par for the bourse where Gordon Brown is concerned — how many column inches can we get out of this man?

Teeming circus troupes of performers are now consulting their I Chings and pronouncing judgement on the rotting corpse of Brown’s political career.

As I write, The Times (London) is reporting that David Miliband (read, goggle-eyed Gollum) and Harriet Harman (read, Mad Hattie Harperson) are plotting the ultimate coup against the once greatly-to-be-desired leader. But the views of many other noted commentators are all over the place like Rorschach tests from a football crowd.

Let’s take the tour.

Matthew Parris in The Times (London) declares any revolt against Brown is all chirruping and twittering and will amount to nothing at the end of days. Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, looks deeply into a pound of cheddar cheese in his fridge and, like a Roman soothsayer reading chickens’ entrails, pronounces Brown safe from the Brutus faction.

While Peter McKay in the Daily Mail entreats Brown to “bow out gracefully”, quoting Robert Browning’s Lost Leader — Never glad confident morning again. A return to Victorian values at last.

However, Janet Daley, in the Telegraph, warns that a newly-anointed four horsemen of the apocalypse could arise from Labour’s ashes to destroy David Cameron’s dreams of electoral glory. Counter-intuitive, that one.

Uber-loyalist, Polly Toynbee of the Guardian, admitted almost tearfully on Newsnight last evening that it’s all over, and poor, dear Gordon, in whom she had invested her very soul, was a total duffer and had to go. While a fellow acolyte on the same programme almost, but not quite, tore off his red rosette in despair.

The feeding fanaticism continued over at the Observer, where that elegant rune-reader Andrew Rawnsley, damned Brown as a dead man walking.

Peter Oborne in Saturday’s Mail broke the news that David Cameron’s people are talking to Alex Salmond’s people about how an SNP administration in Scotland could work together with a Tory set-up in Whitehall. Apparently, as two middle-class, patriotic parties, they could get along just fine, forming an alliance to wipe the Labour Party off the map of Britain — or Anglo-Celtic Albion, perhaps — he’s not called Cameron for nothing.

Simon Jenkins weighed in on Sunday, applauding the idea of an Anglo-Saxon England, devolved from Scotland. Ancient counties and churches could presumably be revived without the nasty socialist influences from north of the Border. England would be richer and might even pull out of the European Union.

The great Lockean libertarian William Rees-Mogg in Monday’s Times thought Miliband a British Obama, but even so, Labour should choose “Hillary” in the person of Hattie Harhaddock. Are we beginning to go ever so slightly mad over this little local difficulty?

There’s so much more of this around, and in the most sober of British circles too. Richard Littlejohn, for example, positively reins in his excitable steed, saying, “Some people are speculating that New Labour now faces annihilation. So what? Works for me.”

Either it’s the annual Silly Season, or something really is afoot here. I still think Gordon should call an immediate general election, if only to allow Cameron and Salmond to form their cross-border coalition and bring peace to this benighted Isle. The Union is dead, Long live the Union.

One thing’s for sure. Regency England is alive and well — and kicking like a mule.

I would never stream my Twitterings on any normal website, but I thought you might appreciate a small selection of them here:

Why does Twitter ask, “What are you doing?” above the write box? Why not “What are you thinking?” Better still, “Why are you doing that?”

Blackberry 9000 on horizon. Just ordered Curve. Should I cancel and wait?

UK Gov on 23pc in new poll. Conservatives on 49pc. The next election is all over.

Moneyizor. The failing eurozone: http://www.moneyizor.com/2008/05/09/the-failing-eurozone/

I was disappointed with Yanik Silver’s book “Moonlighting on the Internet”. Sooo Web 1.0 Minus. Old hat Plus.

Considering buying “Problogger The Book”, but have I read it all on the site? Can anyone convince me it’s a good investment?

Twittergram sounds like a good service in embryo. See Dave Winer. Let’s hope it surfaces soon.

It’s nearly 1pm and I haven’t started my 3-hour working day. Wandering around book shops and buying an Aussie hat absorbed my morning.

Just bought Herman Hesse’s “Narcissus and Goldmund”. It’s the only one I haven’t read. Also John Buchan’s “Sick Heart River”.

Switched Syntagma to full feed. Resisted long and hard but the tide is irresistible.

Steve Rubel thinks that Renaissance Man is doomed because of the internet. The thing is, RM only uses the i/n sparingly. He reads many books.

New Mayor of London has appointed Bill Bratton to clean up London as he did NYC under Giuliani. Great Move. Congrats Boris.

My problem is I find it hard to work when the sun is shining. This is why I never moved to California.

And lots more, folks. Roll up at http://twitter.com/Syntagma. 140 characters of …

Please finish the sentence yourself.

There comes a time in the life of every nation when a once-in-a-generation change creeps up on it unobserved.

In a single day, something grabs the country by the throat, destroys the prevailing calamity, and reveals a bright new landscape of infinite possibility.

Yesterday, that tipping point occurred in middle-England, transforming Britain overnight from a grubby little socialist island off the north-west corner of Europe, into Borisland.

In the context of massive gains by Conservatives in the local elections, London swept away its Mayor, Red Ken Livingstone — who encouraged every terrorist and barmy oddball in exchange for votes — and out popped Boris Johnson.

Boris is a classical scholar who could easily double as a standup comedian. Indeed he often chairs the popular TV panel show Have I Got News For You.

His opponents regularly portray him as “priapic” and a “buffoon”, slurs that have only embellished his aura. Being a priapic buffoon is not an easy accomplishment. Try it.

In fact, as a former editor of the prestigious and gentlemanly journal, The Spectator, he is far from making the “B” and “P” words his own.

As well as holding the Parliamentary seat of Henley, Boris is possessed of an unshakeably amiable nature and an easy approachability that makes him a huge favourite with all kinds of people.

Syntagma does not underestimate Boris as many do, nor do we underestimate the size of the task now facing him. Governing London is no job for the fainthearted or the incompetent. For now, it is enough that he isn’t Ken.

Soon though he’ll be called upon to show his mettle. We have no doubt he will succeed and lead the charge for his party leader, David Cameron, to become Prime Minister, whenever the general election is called.

Hail to Boris, Chieftan of London, the greatest city on earth — apart from Exeter, of course.