The Prime Minister learned the difference between popular parlance and the terminology of economists and statisticians at PMQs today.

While it is perfectly permissible to speak of inflation at zero percent, or even minus one percent, you can never describe spending projections as “a zero percent rise”. Naturally, the Tory benches went into Hogarthian mode after the slip.

Gordon Brown’s reputation for clunkiness went up a further notch today — probably the only indicator on the rise for some years ahead.

David Cameron is right to keep up his relentless barrage of furious interrogation on the issue because, as Fraser Nelson, Matthew Parris, and Syntagma have all pointed out, it throws “Tory cuts” back on the Prime Minister and Labour.

It’s like Andy Murray countering an opponent’s weak second serve with unplayable shots. Conservatives have nothing to fear from their policy of hacking back public financing of the Guardian jobs pages.

At one point, the Conservative leader tried a new label for hopeless Brown: Mr Thirteen-and-a-half Percent. Umm, no … it would take too long to explain, and is too generous by 13.5pc.

Mr Zero Percent conveys an emptiness of content; a nadir beyond which reasonable men don’t venture; a complete full stop.

Cameron rammed it home: “This is the most feeble performance he’s ever given,” he cried, slightly swallowing the last two words as if his mind was already turning to the next attack. [Note to Dave - Don't pull the thrust until the sword comes out the other side.]

However, he produced a “killer blow” with a Treasury document headed: “Reduction in medium-term spending.” Brown attempted to turn the tables by dubbing the Tories “the party of unemployment”.

On The Daily Politics, Nick Watt, a Guardian man for heaven’s sake, supported David Cameron to the hilt. “Brown is back in the 1980s,” he said, “It won’t work today.”

“Mr Zero Percent” is beginning to look like a very useful slogan in the run-up to the General Election.

Nick Clegg again made telling points on spending, but failed to rattle Brown with a demand to cut the Trident project.

Bercow Watch: The Squeaker, as the Mail man in the gallery hilariously calls him, was almost absent from the proceedings. He made a couple of mild interventions on behalf of David Cameron, then settled back into spectator mode.

At last we had a PMQs that shed some light on the crucial arguments over public spending that will rage until the election. All the thinking, though, came from the Tory side. All the fibs, muck-raking and desperation arose from the diminished figure of Gordon Brown.

Syntagma’s Verdict:
Cameron, 8
Clegg, 6
Brown, zero percent
Bercow, 1.5

John Evans

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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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In a snappier and shorter exchange of verbal blows, this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions revolved around a single issue: public spending.

David Cameron went on capital expenditure. Nick Clegg followed with public spending in general based on an EU assessment. Are these two coodinating their attacks now?

The Tory leader began by pulling up Brown on a recent statement in the House claiming he would increase capital expenditure right up until the Olympics in 2012. Brown read out a series of numbers which, he claimed, showed an increase up to 2010/11. Cameron responded with the recent Budget assessment indicating sharp falls.

Brown was visibly rattled by Cameron’s persistence and blustered incoherently at times about bringing capital spending forward because of the recession. He then repeated his glaring falsehood about ten percent Tory cuts across the board.

In a brilliant riposte, Cameron appeared to produce a transcript of a recent Cabinet meeting in which both Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, and Yvette Cooper, a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, challenged Brown’s accuracy on “Tory cuts”. The script concluded, “The Prime Minister was so irritated he brought the meeting to a swift end”.

So much for a return to Cabinet government.

Nick Clegg again got under Brown’s skin by asking when he would recognize that cuts have to be made? Brown gave his usual immitation of a stuck gramaphone record by repeating his oft repeated remarks on the subject.

At his side, Darling smiled enigmatically, showing no trace throughout of any support for his beleaguered colleague. Alan Johnson too was visibly cool and narrow-eyed. The Cabinet is not a happy place to be, clearly.

The new Speaker, Tory renegade, John Bercow, was smooth, crisp and decisive, even interrupting Brown in full, bellowing flow. Could we grow to tolerate him?

Perhaps not if he continues wearing what resembles the gown of a European judge in Strasbourg.

Syntagma’s Verdict:
Cameron, 9
Clegg, 8
Brown, 1
Bercow, 6

John Evans

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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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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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There comes a moment in the fight game when an old boxer refuses to give up out of misplaced pride, but everyone present can see he’s taking too much punishment to continue. At that point the referee steps in and declares an end to the fight.

I never thought I would feel sorry for Gordon Brown, given the weight of punishment beatings he’s dished out over the years, but inexplicably I almost do.

This is not a time to gloat over his demise. For demise it is. Deservedly, he will be cast into the outest of outer darknesses, more so than that other failed Prime Minister, Edward Heath.

He’s the worst there is, has been, and maybe even ever will be. His tragic baggage is that he doesn’t yet know it — or the bit of his mind that pokes out of the top doesn’t.

Gordon Brown has presided for 12 years over the destruction of everything we prize and hope to pass on to future generations.

His personality is so unsuited to high office only the Labour party would think of offering it to him.

Today at PMQs, Nick Clegg got it right. The choice is now between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. “Labour is finished.”

People and parties have a habit of hanging on in there even when there’s no hope left. Some thread to the past convinces them they can repeat what has gone before.

At some point, though, even they stop believing and contemplate throwing in the towel. Yet, if the smallest fragment of hope remains, and no-one intervenes to put them out of their misery, the agony goes on. Known pain is better than the unknown and total oblivion.

What Gordon Brown needs now is to be fished out of the drowning waters, and a kindly fisherman administer the gaffe with the necessary force.

Hazel Blears seemed to know that today. So do the other top Labour women. When the crones pronounce you dead, you are deadly dead.

Who will fish Brown out of his homemade hell? It’s time for the Queen to step in and represent the nation’s most ardent wish to be rid of this man.

May he rest in peace, but let it be quick.

John Evans

PS: Yes, politics is back here in Syntagma. Death is too weighty a subject not to pronounce upon.

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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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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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