Well, it’s all over. Poor Maria was done for as soon as Nadine Dorries gave her heartfelt support. And Fleet Street have their scalp, allowing the dust to settle letting the sunshine of economic success warm our souls. Mercifully, we have been spared some bright sprog mouthing the usual fatuous, “there are lessons to be learned”. Of course there are, but politicians never bother to learn them. Firstly, never give a story legs and secondly if you are going to give an apology to the House at least pretend you mean it and bring out the onion. The chamber can be very cruel or very forgiving, treat it with contempt or worse dumb insolence and love is withdrawn.
At first I felt rather sorry for Miller’s bright young PPS, Mary Macleoud. It seemed rather touching that she sent a join the Maria Celeste sunset cruise text to her backbenchers. It was charmingly naive. Only contact MPs you can trust and never leave a trail , so,you can deny it.The blunderbuss approach will always anger some disgruntled devil who will leak. And a herogram to Guido for getting the scoop.
But then I Googled la Belle Mary and nearly fell off my chair. Blimey, she is PR wunderkinder, who has advised the Queen and the Royal Household. Clearly not on crisis management. I do hope she survives as she seems rather pleasant. But when you start blaming the press when clearly this is not a well polished turd,it will take a while to live down. Dacre will regard her as the enemy. Not a position that anyone with ambition would warmly embrace. So Mary it would be good idea to make lots of speeches about how wonderful our press is and how you cherish their freedom and perhaps they will only just torture you rather than the full execution.
The other lesson that is never learned is that David Davis should not go on manoeuvres. I like him tremendously, he is a good bloke and a friend. I can think of nobody I enjoy having a drink and a gossip with. But at this stage of the game it’s all hands on deck to win the election and give the KIPPERS a kick in the ballots. Alright, him and Cameron are not going be friends and cordially despise each other. But now is not the time to be an agony uncle to the disgruntled, dispossessed and deranged. The stuff in the Mail on Sunday about negotiating our exit from Europe was playfully mischievous and only helps the ghastly Faragistas. Today the TIMES says that he is a kingmaker. But to whom? Afriyie is dead in the water, Liam Fox doesn’t want it, and his views on Boris are not enthusiastic. So I suspect that he sees his role as a Kingbreaker. At a time when the opinion polls are looking very encouraging this is rather unwise. A game of moans.
A few weeks ago I had lunch with two old friends. One a former senior Permanent Secretary, another toying with the idea of standing as a UKIP candidate. The former civil servant eyed the KIPPER and told him that to leave the EU is a perfectly respectable argument. But did he realise the consequences on Parliamentary time?
“Well, we’d just pass an Act”.
“But there are about 56 treaties to renegotiate and unravel. It means parliament would discuss nothing else for a full term”.
Loads of money for lawyers for consultants though. Has anyone really thought this through?
