Chaos Reigns

Despite several years - or is it decades? - of rebranding, the Conservative Party still has a few small image problems - George the Progressively Regressive's Bullingdon sneer, Eric Pickles as priest of austerity, Andrew Lansley handing over the NHS to the men from Mars, Liam Fox in charge of the gun cabinet, and Michael Gove in charge of anything at all, to name only a handful. As when New Labour was torn between the grinning psychopath and the scowling abject, Daveybloke's Cuddlies are having a hard time deciding between British Conservatism's two traditional faces, the Nasty Party (Osborne, Pickles, Lansley, Gove) and the Stupid Party (Osborne, Pickles, Gove, Fox). The latter faction has received a considerable boost in the form of one Nicholas Boles, who has been caught on film, right in the middle of his party's flurry of declarations of war on public services, claiming in so many words that (a) planning doesn't work and cannot work, (b) clever people shouldn't plan things, or at least shouldn't sit in rooms while they do so, and (c) chaos is where restaurants spring up. Boles is the author of a book, aptly titled Which Way's Up?, on the back of which he is apparently described as "one of David Cameron's most influential advisers before the election"; which may perhaps help Daveybloke to explain, if not mitigate, the fact that he failed to win.

Meanwhile the Lower (formerly Upper) Miliband, whose record speaks for itself, has issued a moral proclamation. "Hypocrisy is the worst sin in politics. It's the worst sin in life actually," he said, and I suppose he ought to know.