Baker Bucks Things Up

If there is one thing the Deputy Conservatives are good for, it is seeing both sides of a question. On the second of January, a standard-class flunkey at the Ministry of Motoring was worrying about the possibility of empty trains during off-peak hours; today, the same flunkey is worrying about overcrowded trains during peak hours. As great liberal questions go, it may not have the resonance of further privatisation versus full privatisation (saving the NHS), or keeping the House of Lords as it is versus keeping the House of Lords more or less as it is (the greatest parliamentary reform programme since 1832); but it does mean that Norman Baker has taken the decisive and, no doubt, almost noticeably difference-making step of urging the rail companies to do something about it. Like the day after New Year's, the August bank holiday is a moment well chosen for such acts of Osbornean statesmanship: nobody is doing very much, so there is room for someone like Norman Baker to sneak into the news; and nobody is paying much attention, so our hollow, bitter laughter will not echo very long.