Everyone’s doing it. From ace tennis players to genteel novelists; international fund managers to the Shadow Cabinet.

Wargaming the future is the business tool of choice for the 21st century.

Back in the 1980s we had to put up with ghastly brainstorming sessions, where hyperactive business types vied for attention by shouting crackpot ideas across a crowded meeting room. Now it’s wargaming. Now it’s serious.

Wargaming — in case you’re not familiar with the term — is a technique designed to test the feasibility of potential future actions.

There are two ways to achieve this. The first uses other people as devil’s advocates. The second, more profound method, involves one person utilizing the extended part of the mind that’s not attached to the physical brain.

Political and business wargaming
Let’s look briefly at the first way. The Shadow Cabinet — David Cameron, William Hague, George Osborne, and others — will examine a new idea for inclusion in the party’s forthcoming manifesto by walking it through various stages of presentation and implementation.

What will Gordon Brown’s reaction be? Nick Clegg’s? More to the point, what will Peter Mandelson and Vince Cable think?

The owner of the idea will be too attached to it for objectivity, so other people’s views will strip away the subjectivity and reveal its viability or otherwise. It’s a good way to assess possible objections and the reaction of one’s political opponents.

The method has two stages: other minds’ inputs, and walking the idea through imaginary scenarios. It’s effective as far as it goes, but it leaves out one crucial element.

Personal wargaming
I’ve long been a personal wargamer, subjecting new ideas to an inner process of confrontation with possible causes of conflict and defeat.

Modern tennis players imagine playing superb passing shots down the line against Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer. Golfers do it too — “mind golf” is ultra trendy among golf psychologists and course pros.

Novelists report that at some point in their writing the characters take over and develop lives of their own. That is where the extended mind intervenes in the process.

So how is it done?

If you’ve ever had a daydream designed to perk up your mood, or distract you from the cares and excesses of the day, you have the tools for wargaming.

If you can create a movie in your head and consciously manipulate the action, you can subject an idea or project to imaginary stress tests of viability. It’s amazing how quickly you will identify the stumbling blocks along the way.

In daydreams, you are using the language of the extended “mind-beyond-brain” by picturing the situation. Visualization goes beyond linear thought processes to a much deeper level.

As you approach a hazy area where your knowledge or experience is inadequate, the wider mind slots in an infinitely wiser proposition. You are also able to judge between the success and failure of possible actions by the tone around them.

A sense of depression in the pit of the stomach is a clear negative, while a feeling of excitement and pleasure is a definite go-ahead. If you get something in between, you may have to refine the action into a sharper focus.

Personal wargaming is such a powerful tool that we often do it at an unconscious level. At night, dreams really are trying to tell us something about our major preoccupations. It especially applies to the powerful “hypnagogic” images received in that drowsy period before and after sleep.

Here’s an example from my own demonology:

Next week, I’m launching a major new project. It’s the first in a series of four local supersites covering the counties of the West Country of England.

There have been many teething problems along the way, the latest involving the quantity of code needed to serve adverts to the hundreds of ad spots in the website. Some 12,000 lines of code have to be added to the site before Wednesday. We are drowning in javascript.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t leap out of slumber with my customary verve this morning, but slipped back into unconsciousness with guilty relief.

I found myself wandering down an unidentified High Street with many shopping bags in tow. That in itself is unusual, since I detest shopping and order most things from the internet for delivery to the house.

I became aware that my dream self was planning the launch of a new print magazine, something I’ve done in the past. There was a keen sense of excitement around the project.

After passing in and out of many doorways, I settled down at a table with my heavy load of bags.

What looked like the owner of an Italian restaurant came and sat opposite. He immediately questioned me about my affluence. “You make money so easily,” he insisted. “You just can’t stop. Money, money, money … How do you do it?”

Well, I awoke at that point with the words “money” and “affluence” ringing through my head, and a memory of a new print magazine, yet to appear. I really shouldn’t have to interpret these images for our readers.

Wargaming can happen automatically, as in this case. It can also be induced through a series of consciously-driven daydreams that invoke our extended minds to fill in the gaps where ignorance rules.

I believe this is an aspect of the “sixth sense” that primitive people are said to possess while hunting dangerous animals in the wild.

Wargaming is a great tool when mastered, and an invaluable guide to the future.

Twelve thousand lines of code?

Pah! Chickenfeed!

John Evans

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Lots of normally sensible people are looking around them and spying green shoots growing fast in the June sunshine. In the circumstances, it’s easy to imagine the economy improving in tandem. The national mood rises significantly in the summer months.

Well it isn’t. A new report shows that far from prices beginning to rise in Britain — a sign of growing demand — real “inflation” is actually minus ten percent compared with last year.

To add to the peril out there, the European Union is about to set off another wave of the interminable credit crunch as its banking system shivers on the brink of another catastrophic fall from grace.

World markets are responding accordingly. Wall Street is tanking, banks hugging their cash all over again, and those Will o’the wisps, the credit rating agencies, are picking off Spanish financial institutions at will. Some 25 were downgraded by Moodys only the other day.

With EU banks needing to roll over hundreds of billions of debt this year, the picture looks very bleak, a view endorsed by the IMF over the weekend.

Enthusiasts for a “V” shaped end to the recession are already behind the curve. A “U” bend is looking increasingly untenable. A wipeout winter, leading to a wobbly “W” is now much more likely.

Former British Chancellor, Norman Lamont’s phantom green shoots of the early 1990s are once again fooling the credulous and the desperate.

It’s now clear that Gordon Brown’s hope for a heavenly reprieve is pork pie in the sky. If he delays an election announcement beyond his party conference in October, he will be forced to admit that his efforts “to save the world” were vain and costly mistakes.

This is going to be longer and harder than anyone is allowing themselves to believe — with honourable exceptions.

On top of all its other woes, Britain’s world-beating financial centre, the City of London, is now the subject of a takeover move by the European Union.

Brussels wants to regulate out all its “Anglo-Saxon” tendencies and replace them with great chunks of French law.

Who the hell do they think they are?

More to the point, why hasn’t Gordon Brown gone into battle in the City’s defence? He bled it dry for 10 years, drove it onto the rocks with his insatiable appetite for taxes to fund his super-obese public sector, and now appears to have abandoned it in its hour of need.

Lord Myners, a minor player in the business departments of state, is making squeaking noises about protecting the hedge funds. Eighty percent of the world’s funds are situated in London, mostly in Mayfair. They count for 40,000 jobs and a lot of income.

The envious politicians on the other side of the Channel would love to smite the whole wealth-creation operation of the City in favour of their own tiddlers.

You can see the Labour plan, can’t you? Myners will get a few scraps on hedge funds and Brown will make a big fuss about it.

Beneath, in the thick undergrowth, he will tacitly accept raft upon raft of EU interference in Britain’s vibrant financial services industry.

A British Gulliver will be pegged out by European Liiliputians, while Brown proclaims a triumph for his diplomacy.

The Tories will not want to be seen to support the unpopular bankers and fund managers, so will keep quiet while this outrage is pushed through.

Isn’t it time for the Conservative leadership to show some real grit over this? It was Brown who presided over the banking collapse. David Cameron and George Osborne should be fighting tooth and nail for its future and restoration to buoyant health.

St George didn’t slay the dragon with a swizzle stick.

Dan Brown’s new film, Angels and Demons, is on its noisy way to a cinema near you.

After reading, and mostly enjoying, The Da Vinci Code, despite its elasticated clangers and howlers, I couldn’t resist reading his earlier religious thriller.

Angels is actually a more gripping tale than Da Vinci, with settings inside the Vatican and the European research centre, CERN. However, back-to-back reading of the two novels show they have almost identical plots.

The hero of both is Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of religious iconography. In both cases he’s woken by a strange request to hightail it immediately to Europe to sort out a brutal, ritualistic murder, in which various symbols play a mysterious part.

In the two novels, the daughter of the murdered man plays a central role (the sex interest). In each case the plot’s main feature is to track down shadowy organizations (the Illuminati and the Priory of Sion), both holders of arcane knowledge that threatens the Roman Church and civilization as we know it.

The plots are driven by a series of ingenious clues, containing codes and allusions which only a person of Langdon’s specialty can solve. Naturally he does so, and the novels move to inevitable, breathless, and breathtaking conclusions.

For all the craft and guile with which they are written, both are as formulaic as any television soap opera.

Dan, you wouldn’t be using one of those computer programs for plotting a bestselling novel would you? If you are, could you please tell me which one?

Britain has just been treated to the first open hustings for the position of Speaker of the House of Commons, a post ranked third in the UK’s order of precedence after the Queen and the Prime Minister.

Following the dismally inarticulate Michael Martin, a host of hopefuls buzzed around for our attention.

John Bercow, a Tory supported by many Labour MPs — make of that what you will — was predictably gruesome, lacking all stature, accomplishment and gravitas. If he’s elected, David Cameron should mount a coup against him after the next election. His administration would be tarnished by a hobgoblin in the chair.

Now that Frank Field is out of the running, only one candidate stands out, Sir Patrick Cormack.

Margaret Beckett would do a good job, I suspect, but really the House needs to purge itself of all Labour influence in the next Parliament if it is to regain the nation’s respect and trust.

Sir Patrick would have the right amount of weightiness, in both senses, a grasp of history and how it plays its role in the British Constitution, plus a backbencher’s drive to make his mark. The expenses row will diminish, we believe, when Christopher Kelly’s report is adopted in full, as it must be.

What the House needs now is a magnificent Speaker. It doesn’t need an elf. This is not Lord of the Rings

The other week, William Rees-Mogg wrote an insightful piece on how differently politics looks from his native Somerset.

A rural county, with a very ancient history, one of the top concerns of its inhabitants is bovine TB and what to do about the badgers thought to cause it.

David Cameron apparently gave a good account of himself on the topic at the county show when repeatedly asked about bovine TB. His own constituency of Witney in Oxfordshire has many of the same concerns.

One can’t imagine a single figure in the Labour government who would have a clue about cows.

We remember well that old townie Nick Brown in wellies and rubberized mac standing forlornly in a field of mud and muck after he was suddenly shot into the agriculture job by Tony Blair during the Foot and Mouth outbreak.

It’s the same in my own county of Devon. Westminster seems an age away in another timezone. I can’t recall the name of the Conservative agriculture spokesman, and looking it up on the internet would be cheating.

Let’s hope he (or she) at the very least sits for a rural constituency.

Hilary Clinton was wise to stay out of the Iranian election debacle. Whatever she said would only harden the stance of those seeking to retain power.

Western verbal interventions may make the intervener seem sympathetic and helpful, but do nothing for those fighting against tyranny on the ground.

Only an open free market system has the strength to topple dictators since they can’t possibly control what they don’t understand. We can’t expect ancient theocracies to turn into democracies overnight. It took us in the West long enough.

At least, that’s what we thought.

Something enormous is happening in Iran right now that may heave that process along. Bloggers and Twitterers are feeding out information from all over the country, undermining the State line. You can follow the Twitter stream at Twitter.com by clicking on #IranianElection.

New media is virtually unstoppable in the modern world. Even a clunky technology like fax served to push perestroika along in Soviet Russia as the samizdats cut through the grip of State information sources.

We in the West should stand back while new waves of freedom fighters strive to disrupt tyranny by information rather than violence.

They may just succeed, or ensure the next lot of leaders are much more moderate.

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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Imagine you are a hardened criminal who has just stolen the Crown Jewels.

Would you (a) melt down the gold and sell off the gems to handpicked buyers associated with the underworld? Or (b) declare them to Companies House as assets on your balance sheet?

The ludicrous declaration by Sir Peter Viggers of the creation of a floating island for his ducks as an aid to his Parliamentary duties, places him firmly in the Laurel and Hardy camp. He made £1600 from the act, but I’m sure he didn’t need it.

There’s a lot of that around. MPs are illustrating just how inept they would be if ever they decided to walk on the wild side of the law. The real question is, does that make them unfit for public office, or, in an endearing sort of way, does it reveal their fundamental honesty?

The Tory claims are generally more colourful than Labour’s. Douglas Hogg’s moat is a good example. You can imagine him exclaiming, “Doesn’t everyone claim for their moat on expenses?”

We’re into darker territory with the many MPs who avoided Capital Gains Tax on a house sale by “flipping” the designation of the property to that of their main residence. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, no less, did this four times in four years. He was in effect indulging in property speculation at public expense. Surely he can’t survive?

Again, to put this in perspective, many buy-to-let landlords do something similar when offloading one of their properties. The technique is to rent out your own house and move into the flat or house you want to sell. Once you’ve been there for six months it becomes your main residence for tax purposes and can be sold without paying CGT. I’m told it’s a common practice in the trade.

Surely the Revenue has cracked that one by now, you may ask? Apparently not. The law lays down the six-month rule, and it’s not illegal to move from house to house. Shady, but within the rules.

The Secretary for Communities and Local Government, that walking rictus Hazel Blears, managed this, we are told, three times in one year without, apparently, actually moving in. A bit excessive? It’s still said to be “within the law”. And the law is made by Parliament.

Clearly, Members of Parliament have to have higher standards than your average Dell Boy down the Mile End Road. There can be no excuse for endearing incompetence for the important folk who make the rules the rest of us have to abide by on pain of increasingly draconian penalties. Laurel and Hardy are for Hollywood not Westminster.

Someone has to draw the line somewhere and it can’t be Gordon Brown. He’s too implicated in the wreckage of everything he’s touched over the past 12 years.

What’s much worse than the occasional Stan and Ollie is a calculating manipulator who deliberately turns every decision and action to his own, and his cronies’, advantage.

Brown is severely damaged goods and must relinquish the reins of power before the fumigation of government begins.

Duckgate is a passing amusement. Smile, and move on. There are much more threatening characters to remove from public life.

Let’s not be diverted. Bring on that General Election now!

John Evans

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There’s a lot brewing this morning, including PMQs, an election leak, and general discussion of the state of Parliament.

Let’s start with an intriguing snippet: an apparently inadvertent leak of Gordon Brown’s election intentions by Labour Chief Whip, Nick Brown, one of the PM’s closest confidants.

The picture shows a Twitter post from N. Brown to Labour MP, Austin Mitchell. Since the new Speaker will be installed around June 22, that means an August or September election will be called in July, give or take a few weeks.

The Twitter account was subsequently taken down. Oooops!

This is, of course, a breach of protocol. A Dissolution should be a request from Prime Minister to Monarch, not blabbed about on Twitter.

Nick Brown’s head sits uneasily on his shoulders today.

Via Iain Dale’s Diary

Don’t throw out 646 babies with the bathwater
In his press conference last evening, Gordon Brown was in “Save the world” mode — again.

Having done his bit to subvert and corrupt Parliament over the past 12 years, Brown now poses as the Great Reformer on a personal mission to clean up politics. One could be excused for feeling physically sick during his performance.

Do we want this moral wreck of a man to poke about in the soul of our Constitution? I can hear the howls of rage from here in deepest Devon.

We are now to have a new Speaker foisted on us by a Labour dominated House of Commons, and promoted, I’ve no doubt, by the man who gave us Michael Martin.

I’m rapidly coming to what might be called the Widdy Option — after Ann Widdecombe — of a temporary Speaker (Widdy herself?) to see out the remainder of this Parliament.

Already, leftish commentators are writing about a totally new Constitution, where sovereignty will rest with “the people”, not Parliament. That effectively abolishes the Constitutional Monarchy, characterized by the “Queen in Parliament”.

Let’s get this straight, the public is not angry with the Queen, or even Parliament. The general anger is targeted on Gordon Brown himself and the pig of a party he leads. In the mood of the times, my profound apologies to pigs everywhere.

Constitutional change must begin with what we want to retain, not what the Left wants to get rid of. That means the great principles that underpin the system and hold the revolutionaries at bay.

What we must chuck out is the class-based shop steward system introduced by a sizeable block of Scottish cronies around Brown, including Michael Martin. That should be dumped into landfill at a depth at which it’s unrecoverable.

Only a Conservative Government under David Cameron can do this with full public confidence.

If Nick Brown is right about the election, we may yet enjoy the glorious summer promised us by the Met Office.

PMQs
Two very entertaining encounters between the Opposition leaders and Gordon Brown were laid out before us at this morning’s Prime Minister’s Questions.

David Cameron once again shone a searching light on Brown’s inadequacies.

He spat out his first question: why did the PM say that a quick General Election would mean “chaos”?

Brown tried so hard to be slick but, as usual, stumbled oafishly. Because a Conservative Government would mean spending cuts, he gloated.

Eh? Don’t we have the highest government debt in peacetime history, one which our grandchildren will still be paying off?

Cameron left that hanging in the air by chortling: so he acknowledges the Conservatives will win the election then!

Spending cuts, mouthed Brown, cutting his own throat in the process.

I counted only four questions by Cameron, but they ended in a flurry of fury with his peroration, which left Brown in no-man’s land. “The Prime Minister calls an election chaos. I call it change. When can we have one?”

Spending cuts …

Oh dear.

Cleggie was in cracking form again too, and facing an inevitable barrage of snorting from Labour proles. After his first question, Speaker Martin — yes, the old goat is still there — called someone else.

Clegg stood his ground. “I have two questions, Mr Speaker”.

Martin fumbled. “I thought you asked two questions in your first one.”

Clegg laughed it off and continued.

The Speaker is in demob mood and may be troublesome in the weeks ahead.

Syntagma’s Verdict:
Cameron, 8
Clegg, 7
Brown, 0.9
Martin, vanishingly small.

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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I’ve just watched David Cameron deliver another accomplished speech at the Conservatives’ Spring Conference at Cheltenham.

Gradually — a word also used by George Osborne this morning — he’s beginning to give shape to the message that will take him into the General Election.

“Thrift” loomed large, while “tax and spend” becomes the natural enemy. Sensibly, he didn’t put too much skin on the flesh and bones. Things could take many turns for the worse before election day arrives, however soon it comes.

The speech was a good mix and plays well with the mood of the times, especially after last week’s atrocious Labour Budget. It sounded pitch perfect to me, as far as it went.

I would have liked to hear something about an association agreement with the European Union, but recognize the constraints he’s under. Maybe a little dog whistle in code to us genuine Conservatives would do the trick?

Here’s my suggestion. In his next speech or TV interview Cameron could mention former French President Giscard d’Estaing by name, in any context, and we will get the message.

I’ll be listening out intently.

The following is my contribution to the debate on the standards adopted by our Members of Parliament.

As an author I sometimes despair of publishers. And yet, as a former book publisher, I know the problems publishers face. So I’m posting this little cri de coeur I found on the web.

It’s written by a publisher, obviously, who shall remain anonymous, largely because I’ve lost the reference. But it does provide some insight into the always tortuous relationship between author and publisher:

Authors really don’t like publishers. They don’t like us because we change their work, or force them to. We reject their titles. We dress their books in jackets they hate.

We take custody of their manuscripts and refuse visitation rights. We don’t let them see or comment on marketing plans. We spend very little money or time promoting their books.

Our royalty statements might as well be in Aramaic. We don’t return their voicemail or email. We don’t communicate and we don’t care.

Sure, that’s an over-generalization, but it’s too close to the truth for comfort. It should concern us that so many authors feel this way about their publishers. And it’s our fault, really, for not communicating better about exactly what we do, and why.

Why can’t our MPs demonstrate such exquisite self-knowledge?

Continuing with the ever present thorn in the public foot of MP’s expenses, something glaringly obvious (to me, at least) has been missed by many.

MPs on the left of politics spend a lot of energy denouncing “fat cats” in industry and commerce, as well as the City of London, for their huge paypackets. Consequently, they have induced a phobia about putting up their own salaries to appropriate levels.

A kind of Freemasons’ nod and winkery has been covertly put in place across party lines to use the expenses system to compensate them for what they regard as inadequate remuneration.

Such a system encourages corruption because it is fundamentally corrupt to conceal and disguise payments received — of any sort.

Thus most MPs cross the line between fair reward and brown envelope practices. The system itself is corrupt, therefore those who take part are corrupted.

As Iain Martin writes in today’s Sunday Telegraph, the answer lies in Members’ own hands — they are meant to be sovereign, after all.

How can they hold the Executive to account, when Chief Whips know everything about the jiggerypokery going on all around them? Francis Urquhart would have had a field day. “I know about that bathplug, Jacqui.”

Pay them £100k and be done with it. After all, if a 5-a-day officer at Warminster-on-Sea Parish Council gets that, why not our legislators?

Oh, I forgot. They aren’t our legislators any more, are they? Brussels has taken that prize.

Okay, promise them £150k if they pull us out of the EU. That should get things moving, don’t you think?

Down here in the South West of England we have three football teams: Exeter (the Grecians), Torquay (the Gulls), and Plymouth (the Pilgrims).

Mostly they languish towards the bottom of the Football League, which I believe has four divisions.

Usually one of them manages bottom spot in the fourth division, before disappearing, through relegation, into a bottomless pit of poverty and amateurism.

However, our local supporters are rarely downcast, taking it all in their stride as an Act of God. One cheery soul told me how he deals with the constant stench of defeat.

“Easy,” he said. “When you get your football paper at the weekend, turn it upside down before looking at the tables. My team is usually top of the whole football league.”

Is that a glimpse of Gordon Brown’s political philosophy?

Remember the “world car”?

It could be a Ford, a Range Rover, or a Chrysler, but its parts were made all over the world, from Brazil to China, before being assembled into its final incarnation, when someone would stick a badge on it proclaiming its proud provenance.

This was globalization in the raw. A ruthless, yet profitable, use of comparative advantage to drive the costs of motoring down — however carboniferous the footprint as all those parts criss-crossed the globe on smelly bits of shipping.

Then the socialist left — devoid of purpose after the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s flight to capitalism — spotted a gap in the market. The old International Socialist movement, now describing itself as “Progressive Internationalism”, subverted the word “globalization” to describe its own activities.

Many normally astute commentators fell for this subterfuge and eagerly jumped on the global bandwagon, little knowing that it is, in reality, their worst nightmare.

Syntagma has been one of the few voices to proclaim this dirty trick from the rooftops.

Listen very carefully, I will say this only once: Globalization has ceased to be a technical term of economics and is now a pernicious political doctrine of the old left hiding under a thin veil of modernity.

Anyone using the word “global” more that once a year should be sacked immediately from high office.

Finally, on the new 50p tax rate for anyone earning more than £150k a year:

Both David Cameron and George Osborne said today they will put it on a list of taxes to repeal, but priority will be given to National Insurance increases for people earning just £20k and more.

Fair enough, but given the rate of attrition 50p will cause (see Nigel Lawson’s piece in today’s Sunday Telegraph), perhaps they could turn the list upside-down when deciding which tax to drop first.

Some of the best people do this, I’m told.

PS: I shall be listening out for a Cameroon mention of the secret codeword: Giscard d’Estaing, over the coming week. PMQs would do very nicely.

John Evans

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In the end it played the fool with us all, and didn’t frighten the horses. That is all that can be said of Alistair Darling’s second and, let us pray, final Budget.

If the horses remain calm, we should not. Yesterday’s exercise was designed to do one thing: to conceal a massive timebomb set to detonate when the Tories have been in power for a year or two.

In a way it was a game two halves. The first was Prime Minister’s Questions in which Gordon Brown asserted again that the ongoing slump is not a conventional one, preceded by inflation, but a much more serious occurrence caused by a catastrophic drop in financial blood pressure.

However, Alistair Darling’s Budget calculations premised a normal recession in which the economy powers back to higher than trend growth within a year or two as companies rebuild their inventories and buy new machine tools. GDP will, the Chancellor asserted, grow by a sprightly 3.5pc in 2011 before gently easing back to trend. Cue gasps and catcalls from many MPs.

Slumps caused by financial collapse always take much longer to throw off, as did the Great Depression of the 1930s. This one will have a similar trajectory.

The faultline demonstrated here is not built on human error, but on Brownian calculation of advantage. Brown should have bitten his tongue at PMQs and the disparity of logic would not have been so glaringly obvious. His vanity got the better of him.

The IMF were quick to rubbish the Budget predictions of growth. Evan Davis on this morning’s Today programme practically accused the Chancellor of using a false growth figure to conceal a massive fiscal tightening from 2011 onwards. By then, the Conservatives will be in power and Labour will be screaming “Tory cuts!” from the Opposition benches.

There’s not much love lost in politics, but some personnel would be jailed for that under less liberal regimes. One incident caught my eye. As Darling read out the numbers for public borrowing for this year and next, £175 billion, and £173bn — the highest in history and more than all years added together since 1694 — Gordon Brown was laughing.

Was it because he had made history at last? Or maybe because he believes he has scuppered the next Conservative period in office, setting depth charges to explode year after year.

Whatever the reason, it revealed Mr Hyde in full swing and convinces many of us that Dr Jekyll was a figment of our imagination.

As if aware of the skullduggery that had just been played out, David Cameron put up a spirited and angry response to the Budget speech. It was the performance of the day and contrasted markedly with Darling’s leaden oratory — if it can be called that.

Many of us waited for the scorn to be poured all over the new 50p tax rate for high-end earners, the very people who create our wealth and divert their surplus funds into investments. It didn’t come.

One can imagine the delight of low-tax regimes (so-called havens) at the lip-smacking prospect of all those City types heading their way after this Budget-for-Bennites.

This was another Brownian trap for the Tories. How he must be chortling with glee, like Billy Bunter on receipt of his long-awaited postal order and the prospect of a big bag of cream buns.

Thankfully, David Cameron and George Osborne live in the real world.

John Evans
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