Casting a Damper

Given the recent flooding, a less brilliant climate change denier than Owen Paterson might have decided that there would be better times to remind the public of his existence. Paterson, it will be remembered, was Britain's Head Boy's choice of Environment Secretary the last time large areas of the country were inundated; or perhaps it was the time before, or the time before that. Paterson, who shares the scepticism in which the Euro-wogs are held by so many of the Stupid Party's more representative minds, has been squealing with indignation over his Head Boy's decision to face both ways in the referendum. Ministers will be obliged to defend government policy, to the extent that the Bullingdons bother to formulate a policy beyond the usual rah-rah, yah-boo and oink-oink; however, ministers who wish to permit the Euro-wogs to secede from the mainland will be free to explain why they are against government policy should the question arise in Parliament, except during set-piece gas exchanges. This perfunctory pretence at pandering is not nearly enough for the Paterson, who proclaimed that those who were free to explain their thinking were being gagged, and that those who agreed with government policy would have an unfair advantage because they would be permitted to agree with government policy. There must have been a calamitous rise in the Cabinet's collective IQ the day Paterson was sacked; indeed, it took nothing less than the appointment of Liz Truss to keep the intellectual flood-waters at bay.