Goodnight, Mr Bean

It's not often you get to see a government disintegrate before your very eyes, but it's happening now all right. To seek some parallels and also for a wee bit of light relief, I went trawling through the Hansard archives to find the debate which took place on 9th June 1993.

That was the day Norman Lamont resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer, accusing John Major's Conservative government of being 'in office, but not in power'. Later in the day, Labour leader John Smith opened an Opposition Day debate which excoriated the Major government. Listing the government's failures, Smith opined that 'if we were to offer that tale of events to the BBC light entertainment department as a script for a programme, I think that the producers of "Yes, Minister" would have turned it down as hopelessly over the top. It might have even been too much for "Some Mothers Do 'Ave Them".


John Major as the Frank Spencer of British Politics? Cruel, maybe, but it stuck, and more importantly, set the tone for the remainder of his bedraggled, wretched, unlamented premiership. The question is, did Gordon Brown have his 'Frank Spencer' moment today at Prime Minister's Questions?

David Cameron's demolition was workmanlike and withering. "Aren't people rightly asking now, is this man simply not cut out for the job?", he asked. But while that might have been what everyone was thinking, it took the unlikely figure of Lib Dem stand-in Vince Cable to crystalise the image of Brown's bumbling inadequacy, when he noted "the Prime Minister's remarkable transformation in the last few weeks from Stalin to Mr Bean, creating chaos out of order rather than order out of chaos."

It's one thing to be criticised and heckled by your opponents - indeed, it's par for the course. When they all start laughing at you like that, though, you really are finished.

Labour General Secretary Resigns

A replacement spin doctor down; the replacement for the replacement exposed as having blasted his new bosses prior to his appointment; accused by 5 former Chiefs of Defence Staff of showing contempt for the armed forces; the Director of Public Prosecutions stating that a 28 day limit for the detention of terror suspects 'suited us quite nicely'; a run on a bank; the loss of 25m people's personal and bank details...

All bad enough. But now, we have the resignation of the Labour Party General Secretary, after having been exposed as accepting donations by proxy from a Tyneside property developer, so as to circumvent the rules which Labour had itself introduced to improve the transparency of political funding.

This isn't a 'Black Wednesday' for Gordon Brown - Black Wednesday was far less damaging. This is just a black month full stop; the point at which public opinion tips, perhaps irrepairably, against the government in Westminster. Prime Minister Cameron, anyone?

Move Over, Darling

So... 7.25m families - amounting to 25m individual personal records - have had their names, addresses, dates of birth, Child Benefit numbers, National Insurance numbers, and bank and building society account details lost in the post by HM Revenue and Customs.

Well, let's look on the bright side. At least it wasn't anything important like, ooh, the data for a National ID card that went walkies instead...

You Couldn't Make It Up

Nuclear power is needed to help reduce carbon emissions and to ensure that the UK has secure energy supplies in the future, Tony Blair has told MPs.

BP has abandoned plans for a £500m UK carbon capture power plant at Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, it has emerged.



'The energy company said the decision was a major disappointment but blamed Westminster delays over support. About 1,000 jobs were expected to be created if the green project was ultimately given the go-ahead'.

Some are fond of asserting that the lights will go out unless we build new nuclear power stations in Scotland. If this is anything to go by, the only way to keep the lights on will be to get rid of the sclerotic museum piece that is Westminster government.

Bloody idiots.