Le Salaire de la Poltronnerie

Consistent with their party's new, post-election brand of moral courage, the Deputy Conservative delegates at Gateshead have voted against holding a debate on whether to drop Twizzler Lansley's anti-NHS bill. Instead, they will debate a more Clegg-friendly motion by Shirley Williams, the rejection of which would be less embarrassing for Wee Nicky than a vote in favour of the coalition agreement. Wee Nicky himself, who recommended the original bill to his party with great enthusiasm, has now declared with great enthusiasm that it has been changed out of all recognition; and he also re-asserted the New Labour truth that it doesn't matter how many principles you betray provided you agonise sufficiently: "I think it's a really good thing that Liberal Democrats worry as much as we do about something as precious as the NHS," he said.

The division of labour in the Government appears to be something like the relationship between the characters played by Yves Montand and Charles Vanel in The Wages of Fear: the Conservatives drive and the Deputy Conservatives worry. Vanel's character, it will be remembered, loses his nerve early on and is thereafter despised, humiliated, half drowned in oil and run over by Montand's truck; but he does have the good fortune to expire before Montand, in a fit of Bullingdon steering prowess, drives the truck over a cliff.