The Bulldog Flaps its Jowls

Since Wee Nicky is apparently out emptying the bins or something (one dare not hope that he has retired to a small room with a bowl of muesli and a revolver), it has fallen to Daveybloke's cuddly Secretary of State for Belize, Willem den Haag, to give out the press release about the Deputy Conservatives' latest degradation. He got off to a rollicking start with, "This is a prime minister and a government that keeps its word"; this is a prime minister who promised to protect frontline NHS services, and this is a government that includes Nick Clegg. Daveybloke's European policy of going off in a sulk in order to protect a few unsuccessful gamblers and placate the Wogs Out brigade on his back-benches is, in den Haag's estimation, an act of statesmanship that "will increase the respect for the British government and the influence we have over future decisions", at least on Daveybloke's back-benches. Den Haag denied (or "quashed", as the Guardian in its optimism hath it) suggestions that the UK would be isolated as a result of Daveybloke's isolation of the UK, and made the delightfully off-planet assertion that Britain would "set the pace" thanks to Daveybloke's shiny new idea of yapping from the side of the track while everybody else moves to a different stadium. To do him justice, den Haag did provide one example of where the UK sets the pace and leads the way: "in foreign policy, issues of Iran and Syria and so on". In Standard English, the UK sets the pace in promoting American interests and nagging its European partners to help kill people.

Update It now turns out that, as with tuition fees and one or two other matters, Daveybloke's attitude to the Euro-wogs is actually just what Wee Nicky has been fighting for all this time, and represents a modestly triumphant and reasonable culmination of Deputy Conservative policy. So that's all right.

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