The Sweat of Their Brows

Daveybloke, the Cuddly Conservative, is doing his bit to keep unemployment down by allowing moonlighting by those members of the shadow cabinet who lack sufficient personal initiative to marry or inherit their money. Daveybloke had considered forcing shadow ministers to live off their parliamentary salaries, topped up with whatever little gifts their personal friends in the global kleptocracy or the Russian mafia may see fit to dispense; but it appears that many in the shadow cabinet do not feel this would be adequate to keep them in the manner to which they are accustomed. William Hague, for example, requires over a hundred thousand pounds a year from the after-dinner speaking circuit to maintain what the country's leading liberal newspaper calls a middle-class lifestyle; and Oliver Letwin "gets up at 5am to work at the bank before doing a full day's work at Westminster" so that Mrs Letwin and the little Letwins shall not starve. Several of Daveybloke's front-benchers are so dedicated to public service that they threatened to leave the shadow cabinet unless Daveybloke withdrew his threats against the sacred right to work. Accordingly, Daveybloke caved in, having decided that it doesn't really matter very much if the party is run as an afterthought by a few part-timers; particularly since, even as the Government remains on course to lose the next election, Conservative policy-making remains mostly the business of New New Labour.