Punch and Judy Politics

Daveybloke, the Cuddly Conservative, has been turning on the old Bullingdon charm again, much to the amusement of the poodles and pond-life in the Westminster wendy-house. This time the target was the haplessly ridiculous Nadine Dorries, whose anti-abortion amendment to Twizzler Lansley's anti-NHS bill Daveybloke apparently supported for a while before deciding not to support it after all. Dorries, with her characteristic combination of charm and political subtlety, accused him of being in thrall to the notorious left-wing Svengali, Nick Clegg; Daveybloke, with his characteristic combination of patronising evasiveness and schoolboy inanity, brushed her off with a double entendre and gave Wee Nicky an affectionate pat as he sat down. Dorries' idiocies served as a useful distraction from the considerably more wide-ranging disaster that is Twizzler Lansley's bill; but it does not seem that Daveybloke has yet internalised the important political lesson which might have dragged itself above some people's mental horizon after the Liberal Democrats' humiliation over the alternative vote, and which should have been rammed securely home after his recent dealings with the police: You shouldn't kick the ones you're using.