Calm Down, Dear

Daveybloke, the Cuddly Conservative, has registered a certain irritation at the implication by the outgoing head of the Metropolitan Firearms and Headbangers' Club that appointing a Murdoch drone as a media manipulator for the police might be no worse than appointing a Murdoch drone as a media manipulator for Downing Street, and even perhaps no worse than taking tea on Murdoch's yacht or playing tiddlywinks with Murdoch's favourite editor. Daveybloke has rushed back from Africa, having been caught right in the middle of being good with the coloured folks and telling them how British business can privatise their resources far more efficiently than all those third-rate economies which have sneaked ahead of the United States; and he has wasted no time in putting Sir Paul Stephenson firmly in his place.

"There is a difference between Andy Coulson and Neil Wallis," said a spokesbeing. "Everybody knew that Andy was working for David Cameron. Nobody had told us about the Met's contract with Wallis until after he was arrested." Apparently this explains why the Coulson influence is nicer than the Wallis influence: the idea seems to be that the Conservative Party is more blatantly corrupt than the Met and therefore ought to get away with it. "I would say," blathered Daveybloke, blowing out his inner Blair to full dewlap, "that the situation in the Metropolitan police service is really quite different to the situation in government, not least because the issues that the Metropolitan police service are looking at have a direct bearing on public confidence into the police inquiry into the News of the World and indeed into the police itself." By contrast, the issue of Daveybloke's Cuddly Coulson has no direct bearing on anything very much, and least of all on public confidence in the party that used to claim some belief in law and order before New Labour came along and started the race to the BNP.

Daveybloke also burbled that the Government had taken very decisive action, having set up an inquiry almost before the Leader of the Opposition suggested it and having demonstrated "pretty much complete transparency" despite the likelihood that not doing so would have been even more stupid than crawling up Murdoch in the first place. Daveybloke's African itinerary includes Nigeria, where no doubt he has a thing or two to teach them about transparency and business ethics.