Discussing Royal matters recently, I hazarded a guess that the seemingly never-ending “romance” between Prince William and Kate Middleton may have a simple cause.

Suppose both of them are as disgusted with the state of British politics, and the crumbling of national institutions, as the rest of us. Not an outrageous proposition, I would suggest.

Might they not decide to postpone a wedding until a Conservative Government is returned to Westminster?

Way off the mark? Well, consider that both Prince William and Prince Harry went to the same school, Eton, as the next Prime Minister, David Cameron. They will have met and found they have much in common, despite Cameron’s need to play down his lineage and education in these dark, equality-obsessed times. In private, it would be different, of course.

Which brings me to the point: how different will Britain be when a Tory Government marches into Downing Street, Whitehall, and Westminster?

I think the mood will be spectacularly improved. The nation will breathe a gigantic sigh of relief at finally getting rid of the fetid rump of the most disastrous, dishonest and unpatriotic administration in living memory.

Next summer will bring an explosion of renewal and optimism across the country. Despite the ongoing depression, and the prospect of hard times to come, the lift in the national mood will be palpable. There will be the sense of a nation reborn.

We shouldn’t get too carried away, of course. David Cameron will be presented with the toughest remit of any incomer apart from Barack Obama. That the US President is still widely admired at home and abroad should give our man some sustenance.

Even Obama’s expensive healthcare-for-all plans could actually save America money when compared with the massive 17pc of GDP currently spent on schemes that leave big chunks of the population without any healthcare at all.

Counter-intuitive it may be, but a massive revamp is needed — the three giant US car companies are practically bankrupt it seems because of ongoing costs of healthcare provision for their workforces.

Thus, reform of what in Britain are public-sector leviathans can be presented as opportunities for betterment, rather than slash-and-burn operations against an undoubted culture of greed, mismanagement, and narrow self-interest.

The herd of rhinos in the broom cupboard, of course, are the big public-sector unions, which have the power to terrify ministers and taxpayers alike. Whichever way it’s done, it won’t be easy.

But back to the public mood. There’s no doubt that much will change in Britain psychologically when Brown and his ragtag camp followers depart the scene. The electorate is weary of this bunch of lying losers.

So, will the mood last, and if not, when will the clouds of British gloom once more pervade the national consciousness?

This will depend on Cameron’s ability to instill optimism into the country, despite its economic and political woes. One way to do that, I’ve suggested before.

Margaret Thatcher in her prime would instinctively and unerringly sense the once-in-a-century opportunity for a new Government now. An open goal is awaiting a new leader to negotiate a robust trade agreement with the European Union, while withdrawing from the political and legal entanglements of membership.

Nothing would give such a boost to British self-esteem and pride than the ceremonial dumping of 200,000 pages of Brussels regulation and “directives” in the English Channel.

Nothing would do more to improve the working of Parliament than ditching the rubber-stamp committee for the 75pc of laws that now come from Brussels.

Nothing would bring MPs more back in touch with their voters than ceasing to have to explain why a raft of hated laws, from “green” oddities to bin collections and alien measurements, are really nothing to do with us, guv, honest.

Cameron and the Tories need a big start. Not just a 100-day blitzfest of “eye-catching” measures that add up to less than a row of beans. We’ve been there, done that, and got the body armour.

What the new Prime Minister needs is one big idea that will shape and define his premiership — and his place in history. A mosaic of small technical adjustments will be more of the same.

Cameron should be bold and grasp the national mood for beneficial change. He should go where the cowardly Brown and the vacuous Blair have feared to tread.

John Evans

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There’s a episode of Fawlty Towers in which some of the guests are German.

“Don’t mention the war,” Basil insists. Naturally, the war comes up again and again through cracks in the script.

Most people groan now when they think about Gordon Brown. “Is he still there?” The sheer dismality of the man makes us want him to go away.

So I tried addressing yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions without using the GB words — Great Britain excepted, of course.

It shouldn’t have been difficult. He never answers the questions asked, simply making his point in a language best described as Robotic.

In the event, my wheeze fell at the first hurdle. Brown was so true to form he had the Tory benches rolling in the green-carpeted aisles. You can’t ignore such merriment.

After the calamities of 12 years in office, and the recent wipeout in nationwide elections, Grisly Gordon has decided to reform the Constitution. And, believe it or not, in ways that would scupper an outright Conservative victory in the next General Election.

When David Cameron asked if this package was intended to be pushed through before the next election, Brown accused him of playing for personal advantage.

Cue helpless Opposition laughter.

If ever a man deserved a long stay in a darkened place that dispenses drastic mental curatives, it is he who should never be obeyed.

Apart from a dig or two, Cameron was not at his best. I suspect he has tired of shooting helpless turkeys week after week, which says a lot about his character.

But really, this is no sport for a gentleman of his calibre. Bring on some nippy grouse or a decent flight of pheasants, for heaven’s sake.

Parliament was never so boring.

Syntagma’s Verdict:
Cameron, 7
Clegg, 5
Brown, unmeasurable

It really was that awful. Truly pointless.

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I’m always on the lookout for useful vignettes of what is wrong with the present British government. There are many naturally, but yesterday the perfect example appeared on the BBC.

Reporter Richard Bilton drew our attention to the extensive recording of every journey we make on major roads across the country.

Each time we stray off the country lanes, our number-plates are recorded by “sophisticated” software, checked for dodginess — undefined — and logged on a massive and growing database somewhere in the heart of … who knows where.

The police and other “agencies” of government are able to access this information at will, and use it in whatever way they see fit. Bilton’s point was that no one regulates this activity. Indeed, it’s hard to see how anyone could.

First, he approached the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, and asked who regulates the information. On camera, Thomas said, “We don’t regulate the police’s use of this information”. No one does.

Bilton trudged along to the Home Secretary, the infamous Jacqui Smith. With that wide-eyed and terrified expression common to many MPs these days, she tumbled out her answer to the same question: “The police are regulated by law and the Information Commission …”.

Bilton replied that Richard Thomas had told him they are not regulated by them.

Smith shot back, “We will have to look at that again and at further legislation”.

Call me pedantic but, was she lying, or didn’t she know that the Information Commissioner was not charged with checking this practice? Either way, she should be sacked.

But then that’s typical of the way Labour fudges every aspect of its performance. Jacqui Smith is just not very good at dissembling the facts, try though she might. We’ve become so used to it, we tend to shrug it off now. We shouldn’t. It’s yet another fraudulent element in the “new politics”.

I once worked at the Central Office of Information in Hercules House, London, centre of the government’s information service. The COI has a distinguished reputation stretching back to the war. Since 1997, the operation has been taken over by red-top tabloid journalists and bears little resemblance to its old independent role.

Therein lies the faultline at the heart of this government. There’s nobody charged with standing back in total neutrality and assessing real-time performance, compliance, and the fundamental integrity of the system. Sham operations pass for oversight.

Gordon Brown, who has dominated domestic decision-making for 12 years, first as Chancellor, now as Prime Minister, has run a Brezhnevian Soviet system of government.

The Supreme Soviet is centred on Downing Street, not Parliament, which has atrophied disastrously under his regime.

Local soviets — or quangos, as they are called — run almost everything below central government level and are populated by carefully selected members of the tribe. They genuflect automatically to everything that Downing Street wants, without being told. Thus, if they slip up, as is usually the case, no smoking gun is found that can implicate the Supremo in the cock up.

This is typical of revolutionary cadres throughout history, as they seize power for themselves and mangle every decent impulse in the system.

They then destroy the national culture piece by piece. For without that, no sense of coherence remains. What was once “a people” becomes putty in the hands of cynical operatives who “do politics” in place of governing for all.

We have been had. Taken over by a political class whose motives are not of these islands but of distant lands dominated by warlords and mercenaries. They have polluted the system, destroyed the economy, the Constitution, and our country.

Forget calling for “time to reflect”, as many are, we must get rid of them now. A General Election is the foremost imperative of our times.

John Evans

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In what was surely the most inept statement ever made to the House of Commons, a blundering, stuttering Speaker lost what little authority he has remaining to him.

In a speech of staggering inadequacy, Michael Martin apologized on behalf of the whole House over the cash-for-breathing affair, while putting his own involvement in the conditional tense.

He called for a meeting of party leaders “within 48 hours” to thrash out a solution to the many problems of this imploding Parliament.

As he sat down there followed a rumble of total disbelief from the many members present. The mood threatened to erupt in fury as member after member rose to challenge his authority and competence. Some called outright for his resignation.

When asked about Douglas Carswell’s Early Day Motion calling for him to step down, the bewildered Speaker needed to consult his Clerk on whether an EDM was a “substantive motion” that could be debated. It wasn’t. That was in the hands of the government, he said, to loud groans and protests from all sides of the House.

He had passed the buck to his old crony, Gordon Brown, no doubt expecting his support.

At this point Martin was overwhelmed by shouts from the floor and continuing points of order. He had lost the respect of the House but blustered on as if unaware of it. His thick hide and thicker brain failing to grasp the seriousness of his plight.

There is now real anger in Parliament and that will spill over in the days ahead. It was apparent that this hopeless man, promoted as an ally by Gordon Brown, cannot continue in this role.

If the Prime Minister makes any move to keep him in office, he will go down with him. He probably will in any case.

Brown sat moodily on the front bench and must have sensed another nail biting into his political coffin. He left immediately after the statement.

It was dire. It was death.

Cameron calls for Election now
Minutes before the Speaker’s suicide note, David Cameron addressed a press conference and called for “a General election after June the 4th”.

Couched as an imperative rather than a party political point, the declaration cited the public mood of anger and frustration and demanded an end to the triple chaos in government, the economy and political morality.

The Leader of the Opposition’s intervention will strengthen the growing coalition calling for the catharsis of a national poll.

John Evans

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Some people, who should know better, like to think of themselves as actors. Take the classic case of the bald, plump bank manager who insists on playing the romantic hero in an amateur musical production.

Fred Astaire famously said, “Can’t act, can’t sing, can’t dance” — but everyone knew he could.

Gordon Brown is more like the bank manager, “Can act, can sing, can dance” — but everyone knows he can’t.

This is prompted by a risible clip shown on TV this morning of our theatrically-challenged PM leaping onto a dais to make a speech with such force I thought he might overshoot and fall off the other end.

He was, of course, sending out the message to us in his clunky way, that he is an athletic sort of guy who should not be messed with. The reality is he’s a portly, middle-aged loser who couldn’t act his way out of a ricepaper bag.

It might be rather endearing, except for the fact he’s wrecked the economy, ruined the country, and all but destroyed our Parliamentary democracy. Nothing amusing about that.

Give up the day job, Gordon. An acting career beckons.

Kate Hoey seemed to suggest this morning that the Queen should dissolve Parliament and call a quick General Election. She added, it’s only a convention that HM waits for the Prime Minister to make the first move.

Actually, the Queen has form on this. In 1974, on the advice of the Australian Governor General, John Kerr, she sacked the Labor government of Gough Whitlam, who was running up an enormous Federal budget deficit by spending on dead-end projects. Ring any bells?

It left a nasty taste in the mouths of many Australians, though, and prompted the subsequent referendum on the Monarchy, which the Queen won handsomely.

It may be that HM will remember the unpleasant aftermath of that incident and exercise extreme caution here.

However, I believe a large majority of people in Britain would welcome the cathartic opportunity to lance the multitude of boils popping up all over the body politic now.

Voters can’t be left out of this for much longer or there really could be violence on the street.

With the political class in deep trouble with the electorate, the Queen would be seen as a great redeemer if she acted crisply to transfer the reins of power back to her people in these dangerous times.

Go for it, Ma’am.

Bryan Appleyard has a thoughtful piece in today’s Sunday Times News Review about the effects of the internet, and Web 2.0 in particular, on society.

Surprisingly, for a man who writes extensively about science, he doesn’t really like it very much. By offering almost everything free, he writes, the internet is destroying real-world institutions, like newspapers, that bring together the talents of many specialists, and deliver a much better analysis of events than bloggers, twitterers and other individual efforts can.

The everything-free culture is also deflationary and may have played a part in the current dangerous round of deflation in world markets.

I’ve always been wary of “the wisdom of crowds” myself, since it’s easy to start a psychological contagion, as we saw recently during the “spend, spend, spend” trend that gripped the world prior to the crash. On the other hand, dictators are almost always brought down by popular uprisings.

It works both ways. There are beneficial contagions as well as disastrous ones, but many more of the latter.

The internet can indeed be dangerous to those susceptible to faceless faces and placeless places. On the surface, it appears to strip away many real-world threats, and often presents a sanitized version of events. Dig deeper, though, and it’s not long before you reach the land of psychotics, hate merchants, and lost souls.

The real danger of Web 2.0 is psychological. If you stick with intelligent users and websites, you may enhance your life in many ways. But stray a little to where the mass of players congregate and you could be in trouble from weird thought-forms and cultish behaviour that can take over minds, and even turn you away from friends and family. It’s the young that suffer most from this.

As with all such articles, the question left hanging in the air is: We can’t abolish the internet, so what do you suggest?

Inevitably, the answer is: Nothing.

We’re stuck with it. That’s life.

Europe is in a frightful fix, with Germany tipping off a mountain and the Club Med countries, plus Ireland, in virtual freefall.

After the bankbath, the next hurricane will be the autumn defaults of trillions worth of corporate debts which can’t be rolled over. Anyone invested with highly-leveraged private equity deals should follow the rats overboard before the owners wake up.

In many ways the worst is to come. The world financial system is utterly flakey and lacking in strength. Further crunches will only weaken it further.

Green shoots should be consumed now before the scorched earth returns.

Europe is in a bigger mess than most other regions because of huge exposures to the bust economies of Eastern Europe, and the dismal truth that EU banks have declared much less of their toxic debt load than the Americans.

It all sounds like an approaching death rattle in the throats of a preening Euro elite that boasted of its superior management and prudential skills to those pesky Anglo-Saxons.

What a pity Gordon Brown left nothing in the kitty for a rainy day. We would be sitting pretty compared with our continental friends, who would still be watching us enviously for our … er … prudential skills and superior management.

Stuart Bell has just expressed the view that House of Commons Speaker, Michael Martin, will stand down tomorrow to avoid being kicked out in a vote of MPs. What a relief, one down, one to go.

In the British system of Government, the top three personages are:

The Queen
The Prime Minister
The Speaker of the House of Commons.

In that order of precedence. Two of those three are corrupt and entirely self-serving, with no thought for what’s good for the country. You may be able to guess who they are.

With his close ally and fellow countryman gone, how long can Brown last? Surely the Queen can now prod Brown into calling a quick, refreshing General Election.

If HM points out that, since Brown usually ignores all conventions, she can too, and will not hesitate to dissolve Parliament as a matter of national emergency.

Tuesday evening’s audience at Buckingham Palace will be fascinating. Maybe Her Maj will sell tickets to raise money for a worthy cause.

A Euro-wag says there are only two well-run organizations in Europe: The ECB (European Central Bank) and Manchester United.

Man U may now have more spare cash than the ECB, especially if they sell Ronaldo.

When can we expect Jean-Claude Trichet to approach Alex Ferguson for an emergency bailout?

John Evans

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This is how it ends: with a flood of sordid details about MPs’ little chitties, their bathplugs, dog food, and fridge contents.

Great democracies do not thrive on endless reminders of the necessarily pathetic incidentals of daily life, especially as lived by its high representatives and commissars.

It was once said of Rupert Brooke:

The young Apollo, golden-haired,
Standing on the brink of strife,
Magnificently unprepared
For the long littleness of life.

When that littleness takes precedence in the public mind over great matters of State, our Parliamentary system is not just in trouble, but in terminal amortization.

Parliament is a shambles and, as it stands, no longer deserves the role and position it holds in the nation’s life. The so-called Sovereignty of Parliament is a joke, so much of it having been given away to the European Union, devolution, and to the judges through the lamentable Human Rights Act. Much of what has been enacted in the past decade has stripped away real power from the ancestral gathering place of our rulers.

Throw in the legitimacy that has passed from the floor of the House to the Executive, which now wields the powers of medieval Monarchs within the small compass remaining to the institution, and we are left with nothing worth saving, except the memories.

Parliament is a wreck, living on past glories and the biographies of splendid figures from history. Pitt, Burke, Gladstone and Churchill would recoil no doubt from the present abject scene, were they miraculously returned to the place that shaped them.

I was about to write: “But we can’t just abolish Parliament”, then realized that the “we” in that sentence is illusory. “We” simply don’t figure in the solution. The whole of the reform process is in the hands of the fraudsters and gangsters who brought us to this stricken state.

Gordon Brown, Michael Martin, and their accomplices, will continue to filibuster for as long as the rules permit — perhaps another year or so. They must be made to understand that hanging onto their jobs, in the circumstances that exist, would be a crime against the nation.

By then, Parliament will have been holed beneath the waterline: by the Lisbon Treaty; by more circling of wagons around the “rights and privileges” of “honourable” members; by Vatican-like attitudes towards the “Sovereignty” of this busted English Bastille, destroyed not by enraged outsiders, but by its own inhabitants, in our name.

It’s not easy to overstate this. As vultures circle overhead, and vicious parties of the far left vie for grassroots support, all hope rests with the Conservatives led by David Cameron, who themselves have a vested interest in the current chaos.

Luckily, Cameron is showing some real fight and steel in his determination to destroy the fungible Brown and his frightful cronies. One wonders though if he realizes the scale of the job ahead of him?

On attaining office, he should mentally assume that our Parliamentary democracy has burnt to the ground. He must reassemble the principles that have served us well over the centuries: the Rule of Law, Common Law, national independence, the Constitutional Monarchy, a Parliamentary system that rests on honour not personal advantage, transparency of action and motive, and a general acceptance that power should be exercised at the point of maximum competence, not only in Whitehall.

It could be accomplished by a series of majestic Great Reform Acts on a scale matched only by the Victorians. If ever there was a time for big, brave solutions, it is now.

Cameron will not long survive if he retreats into small-scale technical adjustments. The country is waiting for a programme worthy of the times we live in.

He should also create a constitutional corpus of law that could be changed only by a complex process involving the agreement of a few outside bodies, whose membership is not controlled by Parliament.

It could include a strict limit on Government spending and borrowing, way below present levels, except in a major war. This should be wrapped up so tightly that a profligate socialist adminstration, like Brown’s, can never be elected again.

Full legislative powers should be returned to a refurbished Palace of Westminster, as a matter of urgency, where Commons and Lords have real teeth to control the Executive power.

Only a programme on such a scale can restore confidence and, yes, affection, to our dying system of Government.

David Cameron’s time has come. He will, I believe, have the kind of majority that will allow him to accomplish this task. He must not hold back or be content with small flicks around the edges.

The problems of Parliament go beyond the domestic affairs of its members. They encompass nothing less than the survival of the nation itself.

John Evans

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Is this the worst British government ever?

It depends whether you include a few autocratic Kings in the mix. The reigns of King Stephen and George IV would be impossible to simulate today, given that they both bankrupted the country, George was utterly dissolute, and Stephen invented perpetual civil war.

Although King Henry VIII created the framework for English liberties until the invention of the European Union, his reign must have been ghastly to live under, especially for people situated anywhere near a monastery.

With the advent of democracy, the governance of the nation became a little more accessible, if no less fraught on occasions. In living memory, though, it’s hard to think of an administration so cackhanded, corrupt, violent to its opponents, and so thoroughly despised by almost everyone you meet as Gordon Brown’s.

His economic arrogance and incompetence have ignominiously fly-tipped the country into approaching bankruptcy. His apparent lack of concern about the vast vault of accumulated debt — a Fort Knox stuffed full of IOUs and demands to pay where our Sovereign wealth fund should be — amounts to the greatest danger the country has faced since the second world war.

Not even Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan in tandem created such a mess.

We are told to look at pictures from the Great Depression of the 1930s and to compare them with photographs of today. It’s nothing like as bad, the Brownites cajole.

It’s a specious argument, for even pictures of the time before depression looked exactly the same. That’s how people were then. That’s how they dressed.

The relatively affluent, smartly-attired and well-nourished folk queueing up outside Northern Rock for their life savings last year does not represent a lesser event, it simply reflects the way we are now.

The loss of wealth is profound and, in Britain, will exceed the losses of the 1930s in percentage terms. It’s the relative destruction of value that counts, even if we do start from a higher base.

On sleaze, Brown’s government has long overtaken the John Major years. As Major wrote last week, Brown continually lies about what he inherited in 1997. It’s blatant, casual and, when done in the House of Commons, should lead to an apology, followed by resignation if repeated on the industrial scale of a Gordon Brown. But he is oblivious to both honesty and honour.

The latest scandal, over expenses claimed by MPs and Ministers, is part of a long line of misdemeanours and allegedly criminal acts committed by this Labour government.

The system of allowances that corrupts Members of Parliament, rather than pay them at a commensurable rate, is absolutely typical of the Brown dispensation. Part cowardice, part concealment, part fantasy, partly adolescent, part corruption, part greed, part lust for the trappings of office, it has nothing whatever to do with good government or the needs of the country.

Yes, I can safely say, this is the worst British government ever. This generation can perhaps come to a new understanding of Guy Fawkes and his motives. Getting rid of egregious evil in power is not easy — and Brown has a year to go, according to the rules.

Today, as you hear MP after MP wail, “I did nothing wrong, I didn’t break the rules”, remember that is Gordon Brown’s passport through to June 2010. He has the rules on his side.

Can he be allowed to take us all for fools for so long? His disdain for public opinion is well known.

But he may find it will overwhelm him long before his time is up.

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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Sunday morning at last, after a week of calamity for Britain’s Labour government.

Not surprisingly, the papers are flagging enormous Conservative leads in the latest independent opinion polls. The Mail on Sunday carries a 19pc advantage, while the Sunday Telegraph is close behind with 17pc. Either would do for the Tories.

George Osborne put on an impressive performance on Andrew Marr’s programme, looking and sounding more like a Chancellor than Alistair Darling will when he presents the Budget on Wednesday.

These are heady times for the Tories. Those of us who have been forecasting a crushing landslide at the next election (due before early June, 2010) have been running out of steam lately. No sweat.

I still stand by my counter-intuitive forecast last week that Gordon Brown will resign within days or weeks — and I don’t mean 50 or 60 weeks.

Peter Oborne has written a timely piece in today’s Observer, detailing the failings of New Labour governance under both Blair and Brown.

He traces them back to Maurice Cowling at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, who taught the Namierite school of history to Michael Portillo, Michael Gove and … Damian McBride.

Oborne writes of Cowling, “… his particular scholarly contribution was to take Namier’s pessimism about human nature, scepticism about political ideas, and dogmatic insistence that public events could only be explained by reference to narrow personal interest, to their ultimate conclusion.”

This led directly to a method known as “manipulative populism,” a fancy term for lying through your teeth.

Thus peripheral power passed from Chief Whip, whose precinct is Parliament, to the Prime Minister’s spin doctor, whose domain is public perception and news management.

Gordon Brown earlier rejected that dismal thesis, but has secretly embraced it like a frog to a pond.

That’s perhaps the worst aspect of Brown’s character — his complete lack of any.

We have been getting reports that the saintly Vince Cable has been getting above himself lately, adding a touch of grandeur to his air of infallability. When he starts waving to crowds like the Queen Mother, we’ll know his transformation is complete.

In today’s polls the Liberal-Democrats have received a big bounce from Labour’s implosion, putting them at 21pc. It’s fair to say that most of that is probably due to their Treasury spokesman, Mr Vincent Cable.

Is it possible the Lib-Dems could become the Official Opposition after the election? Don’t rule it out. They fight hard at election time. Hand-to-hand engagements are not unknown. If they were allowed bayonets, Paddy Ashdown would be leading the charge.

Once popularly known as “the Salads,” a more accurate rendition might be “the Saladins.”

Vince should tread carefully though. There’s a term in engineering called Cable Fatigue.

He may be getting perilously close.

It’s that time of year when wannabe artists start packing up their works for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, which is open to almost anyone.

There was a wonderful vignette of the modern art scene a few years ago when an artist sculpted a head for the show. To display it at its best, he purchased an off-the-shelf plinth on which to mount it, then sent it off to the RA.

As often with the best laid plans, the head became separated from the plinth in transit.

Imagine his surprise when, weeks later, the Academicians rejected the head, but accepted the plinth.

I’ve often wondered if many of the exhibits there comprise bits of packing material and wrapping paper.

That saintly chipmunk, known throughout the land as wee Hazel Blears, Minister for Communities and Other Odds and Sods, wonders why we Brits don’t have a TV version of the American West Wing.

Maybe we do, only in real life.

Remember when New Labour first came to power? Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson referred to each other as Jack and Bobby, after JFK and his brother. Later the name Bobby was passed on to Mandelson’s dog — dogs feature large in life at the White House.

Were these two prize chumps role playing themselves as Pres and Chief Sidekick? Don’t put it past them. Juvenilia is all part of The Project.

Come to think of it, almost every ghastly glimpse we get of life inside Number 10 has an eerie resonance with the West Wing way of doing things.

Never mind that our constitutional arrangements are vastly different from the US version, Blair and Brown made them fit somehow — with much violence.

I believe the sheer incoherence of the government machine is due to excessive WestWingitis. Tony Blair was once reported to have asked a scriptwriter on the show for advice on how to govern Britain.

Is it any wonder … ?

Prince Philip today becomes the longest-serving Royal Consort in British history. Probably the oldest too.

On Tuesday, the Queen is 83, the oldest reigning Monarch in our history.

God bless them both, and may they continue to bring sanity to our sadly-depleted and much tarnished public affairs.

John Evans

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