Cammo, Hammo

I've just caught up with David Cameron's interview on Scotland Tonight.  Although John MacKay is plainly nothing like as forensic an interrogator as a Ponsonby or a Brewer, I think he did a reasonably good job of pressing the Prime Minister on some uncomfortable questions.  At the outset, it was pointed out to Cameron that he and his policies are the embodiment of what Scotland is getting as a result of not being independent right now, and is also the embodiment of what we will continue to get if we vote No in September.  Essentially he was being invited to actually defend his record and his future plans to the Scottish electorate just for a change, rather than relying on a God-given right to govern us due to a political system that was devised 300 years ago.  His response was extraordinary.  It amounted to -

"I'm not interested in defending my policies to the Scottish electorate, and I'm not going to.  For now I just want you to decide to permanently contract out your choice of governments to the UK electorate at large.  Only once you've done that will I defend myself to that electorate, who I will invite to choose on your behalf that I should be your Prime Minister.  And in all honesty it's best not to think about that too much when you step into the polling booth.  Just think about the cute kittens of Britain!  And don't partition the Middleland!  The sheep are too identical!"

We're told that we can just take Dave's word for it that he will deliver new powers for the Scottish Parliament if we vote No, because, hey, he's a pretty straight kinda guy, and he's also got this fabulous track record of delivering on devolution already.  But does he?  The delivery of the Calman proposals can be entirely explained by the presence of the Lib Dems in the coalition - all the mood music before the 2010 election was that a majority Tory government would kick Calman into the longest of long grass. The devolution of policing powers to Northern Ireland is an irrelevance, because Prime Ministers of all colours have always seen Northern Ireland devolution through the prism of the peace process, which in turn is seen as a precious opportunity for a legacy.  And the delivery of extra powers to Wales was probably down to a combination of pressure from the Lib Dems and the entirely spontaneous (bordering on miraculous) emergence of a relatively progressive and forward-thinking Tory leadership in the Welsh Assembly, who it would have been embarrassing to knock back publicly.  So this track record is largely one of wearily going along with other people's ideas due to the necessity of circumstance.

We also learned that, incredibly, Cameron does not think John Smith's opposition to everything the Tories stand for has any relevance whatever when the late Labour leader's memory is invoked in this campaign.  Apparently the one and only fact about Smith that matters is that he was opposed to Scottish independence.  Well, he undoubtedly was a unionist, and he was as scathing about the SNP as any present-day Labour figure is (although he was also a much more authentic devolutionist than most of the current crop).  But when working-class Labour voters think back to John Smith wistfully, does anyone really imagine that they're thinking of his attitude to the constitution?  The likelihood is that they're actually wondering how they can ever get a Smith-like politician installed as the Prime Minister of their country - and in the context of this campaign the only logical conclusion that can be reached is that a Yes vote is the way of making that possible.  "Think of John Smith when you're voting for me to remain your Prime Minister" does not strike me as being the most promising message from Cameron.

Oh, and apparently the reason Cameron's government isn't going to publish the Top Secret Ipsos-Mori Mega-Poll (which it's now pretty obvious showed a Yes surge of some description) is because they don't publish internal polls.  And why don't they publish internal polls?  Because they don't.  Well, that's all totally clear.  A friendly hint, Prime Minister - when you repeatedly tried to get off the hook by saying "there is no shortage of polls in this campaign", a lot of viewers will have been thinking : "So what's the harm in one more, then?  What's so special about this one that it needs to be kept hidden at all costs?"  And when you cited your "passion for the United Kingdom" and your government's "engagement with the campaign" as reasons for commissioning the poll in the first place, viewers will have been thinking : "You can be as passionate and as engaged as you like, chum, just so long as you don't do it at our expense and then keep the results secret."

As we know, Cameron is fighting for the Union with every fibre of his being, but, alas, his being simply doesn't contain enough fibres for him to contemplate the TV debate with Alex Salmond that opinion polls show the voters want by an overwhelming margin.  His alternative excuse is that this is a debate between the Yes campaign and the No campaign, and that since Alistair Darling is the leader of the No campaign it's only sensible and logical that Darling should debate with Salmond who, er...isn't the leader of the Yes campaign.

Dennis Canavan is Darling's direct counterpart.  Salmond's role in this campaign is as the head of the government that is supporting a Yes vote.  His only possible counterpart is the head of the government that is supporting a No vote, namely David Cameron Esquire.

But by all means let's have a ninety-minute, prime-time, head-to-head debate between Salmond and Darling anyway.  Come to think of it, can we have five?

*  *  *

Vote Yes to independence to keep Scotland in Europe

Sorry that blogging has been a bit sluggish of late, but I haven't been entirely idle. I have a new article at the International Business Times, on how David Cameron has just blown a hole in Better Together's campaign strategy - seemingly without even noticing.

You can read it HERE.

Sing it out, every song is a cry for love

From the Telegraph's 'report' on the seemingly imminent resolution of the referendum stand-off -

"Mr Cameron told the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham that the Olympics highlighted the depth of feeling for the UK, adding: “Whether our athletes were English, Scottish, Welsh or from Northern Ireland, they draped themselves in one flag."

I know. It would have been even more touching if they'd all done it of their own free will.

"Now, there's one person who didn't like that, and he's called Alex Salmond."

Er...make that two, David. Don't suppose there's a third out there somewhere, by any chance?

"I'm going to see him on Monday to sort out that referendum on independence by the end of 2014."

Ah, you mean you're sheepishly going to make a string of concessions in order to secure the one and only thing you've been hellbent on achieving from the word go - ie. being clearly seen by all Scots as the person who has denied them the full range of choices on their own constitutional future. Masterfully done, as ever. Don't worry - I doubt if there's a single Devo Max supporter who will now feel driven to vote for independence as a result of your antics.

"Let's say it, we're better together and we'll rise together..."

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains.

You RAI-AISE me up, to walk on stormy seas...

All the questions are for the British Nationalists now

So, where to begin with David Cameron's "positive case for the union"? There's a lot of agreement that it's preferable that he has at last switched to a positive tone (albeit this led him to some truly fantastical claims about the magical properties of "my love, our home, this United Kingdom", which I may come onto later), but I do hope he and his followers realise that this new strategy is for life, not just for Christmas. He can't bail out when the going gets tough and revert to his comfort-zone of chortling to himself and his Old Etonian chums that an independent Scotland would be "flying...by the seat of your pants!!!!", because that would directly contradict his admission yesterday that Scotland could easily make its own way in the world. Perhaps even tougher for Tory foot-soldiers will be to stop casting doubts on the suitability of Scottish politicians for the position of Prime Minister, because those objections directly contradict Cameron's high-flown rhetoric about Scots leading in the UK. Gordon Brown was the elephant in the room during that passage of the speech - you know, the "one-eyed Scottish idiot".

Another problem is that, as John Curtice has pointed out, although it was a positive case for the union, it was the wrong positive case. The message was not "here is my vision for Scotland's future as a country" - it was "Scotland is not your country, Britain is our country, and by crikey it's fab, please don't take it away from us". He was unambiguously casting himself as a British nationalist, and defining a No vote to independence as a vote for British nationalism. That seems a mildly crazy thing to do, given that most Scots are Scottish nationalists with either a large or a small 'n'. I can't help but wonder if his advisers have been influenced by the effect a positive articulation of Canadian nationalism had in the 1995 Quebec referendum. If so, it's a classic case of learning the wrong lesson from history. A Scottish journalist who attended the flag-waving 'Rally for Canada' a few days before polling day in '95 (I think it may even have been Kenny Farquharson) pointed out at the time how hard it was to imagine an equivalent Union Jack-waving rally in a Scottish referendum having anything other than a counter-productive effect. It's not that there isn't any background attachment to Britishness in Scotland, but our own notion of Britishness is rather loose and multi-national in nature, and entirely alien from the one-dimensional nationalism Cameron is advancing, which is really a kind of 'Greater England nationalism', or 'the-state-London-is-capital-city-of nationalism'. It's not actually true that Scottish independence would rob Cameron of his Greater England "home", as he claims - but that home would certainly be diminished in his eyes. A shrunk landmass, a shrunk population, shrunk clout in international institutions. In short, independence would impair the projection of London power - and nothing can be more alarming to a Greater England nationalist than that. That's what he was getting at when he talked about the 'loss of something very special'. In particular, he gave the game away by placing so much emphasis on Britain's status as a member of bodies like the UN Security Council. No-one is under any illusions that an independent Scotland would have such a status, so it's hard to escape the conclusion that what we're being asked to worry about here is the (frankly very slim) possibility that the remainder of the UK might lose its status as well after Scottish independence. In truth, this isn't an argument about Scotland at all - it's a squeal of pain from a London politician about what he stands to lose.

Besides which, Cameron's promotion of British nationalism as a 'nobler nationalism' was absurdly contradictory. With one breath he insisted it didn't need to base itself on "ancient myths, blood-soaked memories and opposition to others", and with the next he started wittering on about the defeat of Hitler and the Battle of Waterloo! And how precisely does all the inspiring talk about 'solidarity' and 'stronger together, weaker apart' square with his isolationism in Europe? Faced with such irreconcilable contradictions, we can again only conclude that this is really about London's Little Empire, and preserving its sovereign reach.

The reality is that the 'special' things that people in Scotland truly value about Britishness are not contingent on the existence of a British nation state. Indeed, the social union across these islands may well be enhanced once we have jettisoned the resentment-fuelling straightjacket of a political union that works in the interests of one 'partner' more than another.

Of course, the other key feature of the speech was the rabbit out of the hat about the potential for further devolution if Scotland votes No to independence. Depending on whether Cameron actually means a word of it, this could either be characterised as the Douglas-Home Deception Strategy or as the Top Secret Devo Plus Plan, because apparently we're not entitled to know any details about it until after the referendum. Certainly Cameron's efforts to convince us that this isn't a repeat of the Douglas-Home wheeze from 1979 were totally unconvincing. He asked us to reflect on his record in delivering the Scotland Bill, but there's one slight snag with that - it was in fact the coalition agreement that delivered the Scotland Bill. All the mood music before the 2010 election was that a Tory government would kick Calman into the long grass, and there can be little doubt that's exactly what would have happened if the Tories had won a majority in their own right. The personal record Scots will actually be reflecting on is Cameron's failure to respect the SNP's overwhelming mandate from last May to negotiate extra powers in addition to those currently in the Scotland Bill.

But even if we were naive enough to take these incredibly vague hints of jam tomorrow seriously, Cameron has just got himself into a bit of a bind. At the heart of the unionist strategy until now has been the constant demand that the SNP must answer a series of detailed questions (almost all of them already answered umpteen times) about what independence will look like. But at a stroke, we're now in a position where we have infinitely more clarity about the effect of a Yes vote than we do about the effect of a No vote. There are an endless series of questions that need to be put to Cameron about how powers will be divided between Westminster and Holyrood under the Top Secret Devo Plus Plan that will supposedly be triggered by a No vote in the referendum - and incredibly he seems to think an adequate response is that the Scottish people don't have a right to know until after they vote for it. It's no use arguing that the referendum is about independence and not enhanced devolution - he has explicitly linked the two issues himself by including the prospect of delivering the Top Secret Devo Plus Plan in his list of reasons why people should vote No. There's no way back - from this point on, all the hard questions on detail are for the Brit Nats.

A few other miscellaneous points from Cameron's speech...

"I am a classic case.

My father’s father was a Cameron.

My mother’s mother was a Llewellyn.

I was born and have always lived in England."

A great many things can be reasonably said about a multi-millionaire Old Etonian Prime Minister who is a direct descendant of William IV and is married to a baronet's daughter, but I'm not sure "classic case" is one of them.

"Scottish pilots helped us to free Libya from tyranny and prevented a failed pariah state festering on Europe’s Southern border…"

But Danish pilots helped even more. Denmark, let's not forget, is an independent country with roughly the same population size as Scotland. It is also in the enviable position of deciding for itself which international military adventures it wants to get involved in, and which it doesn't. An independent Scotland might well have freely chosen to assist in Libya - I strongly suspect we wouldn't have touched the Bush/Blair invasion of Iraq with a barge-pole.

"We’re safer, not just because of the expertise and bravery our armed forces to which Scotland makes an immense contribution…

…but also because of our policing expertise and security services respected the world over.

When a bomb went off at Glasgow Airport the full resources of the UK state went into running down every lead."

Would it be terribly insensitive of me to point out that if only we had been decoupled from Britain's slavishly pro-Bush foreign policy, that bomb in Glasgow Airport would probably never have gone off in the first place?

"…but a common system, rules and currency which has helped to make us the 7th largest economy in the world."

Down from 4th just a few years ago, David. Do you think he'll finally be too embarrassed to parrot that rather desperate line when the ranking is 14th?

"One issue that is very close to my heart is aid.

And this is an issue where Scottish people have a huge influence...through the UK, Scotland has global reach."

It's hard to escape the conclusion that he's suggesting that Scots care more about overseas aid than others in the UK - but if so, it's difficult to see what difference we can possibly be making given that this isn't a government Scotland elected. The logical conclusion to draw is that the combined overseas aid budget of Scotland and the remainder of the UK would increase after independence, because a Scottish state would accord it a higher priority, and the UK government would carry on much as before.

"I believe in real devolution and want to make devolution work better.

I want a Scotland where more people own their own homes.

Where more people keep more of their money."

Another part of the speech that makes me deeply suspicious about the Top Secret Devo Plus Plan. This is thoroughbred Thatcherite language - she also used to regularly talk about 'real' devolution in place of, well, real devolution. Thanks all the same, Dave, but the kind of devolution we're looking for isn't a play on words.

Cameron a liability in the independence referendum? Don't be fooled - he can pronounce 'feartie'.

I was grateful to Stuart Dickson yesterday for forwarding me an article from behind the paywall, detailing the dismissal of the Scottish Tories' Head of Media for "systematic party bias" in favour of Ruth Davidson during the leadership election. The only surprise to me is that he got the chop for it - isn't systematic party bias in favour of Ruth Davidson the official Cameroon position?

The rest of the article concerns the opposition parties' scathing attacks on David Cameron for failing to mention Scotland or the upcoming independence referendum during his leader's address to conference. Jeez, these guys are impossible to please. They should follow the shining example of Alan Cochrane over at Tory Hoose, who is more than content to conclude that Cameron has his finger right on the Scottish pulse and will be a "formidable asset" in the referendum campaign simply on the basis that...he used the word "feartie" and pronounced it correctly.

Seriously.

In fact, Cochrane's musings on the matter are strikingly reminiscent of breathless BBC royal correspondents down the years marvelling at the success of assorted princes and princesses in mastering fiendishly complicated tasks such as opening curtains or posting a letter -

"However, as well as having the hacks scratching their heads about who could have taught this old Etonian a word like “feartie” – he even pronounced it properly..."

If the possibility that Cameron might have had a Scot around to ask about such matters hasn't even occurred to Cochrane, that tells us all we need to know about the Prime Minister's inner circle. And Old Etonian Tory leaders may not be renowned for having much of an attention-span for things outside their normal range of experience, but just how long does it take to rehearse the correct pronunciation of a single word?

But, admittedly, if Ed Miliband's attempt at "Lamont" is the standard to beat, the boy done good.

Cammo : Fanboy meets frit-boy

There seems to be something about responding to Angus Robertson in the Commons that leads to David Cameron leaving his self-awareness at home.  I thought nothing could top his sneering reply a few weeks ago on the closure of the RAF bases - "you won't be flying planes, you'll be flying...(snigger)...by the seat of your pants!!!" - but he somehow managed it at PMQs yesterday.  Not content with doing what the public loathe most and simply ignoring the actual content of Robertson's question, he launched into this spectacularly ill-conceived attempt at 'humour' -

"I think you can topple those with an SNP that said they were going to have a referendum on independence but never did.  As a predecessor of mine once said - frit."

Yep, there's nothing like a fanboy Thatcher Tribute Gag to have the people of Scotland laughing in the aisles.  But let me just see if I'm missing something here.  Of the five parties and one independent represented in the Scottish Parliament, the SNP, Greens and Margo MacDonald all favour a referendum.  By way of contrast, and in spite of their claimed certainty that independence would be soundly defeated, the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour are all implacably opposed to a democratic vote on the matter, and used their combined parliamentary majority to block one from taking place last year.  Moreover, the last time I checked, David Cameron was the leader of a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, and was not, in fact, the leader of either of the pro-referendum parties.

That being the case, was it really the wisest idea to invite the electorate to ponder the rather telling question of "fritness"?

When the facts don't change, Dave changes his mind

I seem to recall that in the run-up to the general election I made the point that, while on the whole a Labour-led government would be the lesser of two evils, there was one narrow sense in which a Tory victory would be preferable - it might just spare Gary McKinnon the horror of extradition to America. But I also noted that I wouldn't exactly faint with amazement if, once in office, the Tories rediscovered their servile pro-American instincts, and did a complete U-turn on the subject.

Well, if Cathy Newman's reading of the situation on Channel 4 News is to be believed, it seems those words were prophetic. Cameron's position now appears to be identical to Brown's (private) pre-election stance that McKinnon should be extradited, but perhaps be allowed to serve his sentence in the UK. And what startling new facts have emerged that could possibly explain this extraordinarily swift change of heart? Only one that I can see - there is no longer an election in the offing.

As it turns out, then, there was no reason at all for preferring a Tory-led government. In a strange way, that's quite reassuring.

Here we go again

I wonder if I was the only person today who saw the headline "Prince William announces engagement" and then spent the remainder of the day avoiding newspapers and the TV news at all costs.  (It's a coping strategy I perfected when England won the Rugby World Cup.)  I think I'll probably just about be able to cope with the horrors of the day itself - with plenty of notice and medicinal assistance.  But when it's a bolt from the blue, 24 solid hours of Royal Syrup is more than I can take.

The only breach in my defences was that I saw about ten seconds of David Cameron doing his "I know I speak for the whole country" bit (no-you-don't) with the sound down, and even that was enough to make me feel distinctly nauseous.

Cameron draws the wrong lesson from Jackanory Jim's success

David Cameron, in response to Angus Robertson's question about the likely closure of RAF Lossiemouth at PMQs -

"If you had an independent Scotland, you wouldn't be flying planes, you'd be flying by the seat of your pants."

A sneering reply that was the cue for lots of equally sneering laughter from the Tory benches - but let's just examine this for a moment. Who are they actually sneering at? Not the SNP, that's for sure - Cameron wasn't particularly talking about an SNP-run independent Scotland, or even a Labour-run independent Scotland. He was simply mocking the capacity of Scots to govern themselves under any circumstances.

Now, you can see how Cameron might have been deluded into thinking that he's onto a winner here. After all, Labour have been talking Scotland down for decades and have more often than not been richly rewarded for their troubles. But the difference is that it's usually Scottish Labour figures who are the front for the talking-down operation. Why else does it infuriate us so much when Jackanory Jim does his "as a Murphy, it breaks my heart to say that an independent Scotland would be as rubbish as Ireland" routine? Because we know that the spinning of such yarns does get under people's skins, and it does ultimately sap this nation's morale. But hearing an Old Etonian Tory PM repeatedly sneer at "you" Scots will, I suspect, have a somewhat different effect.

Great politics, Dave. Don't stop.

Could child benefit be Cameron's poll tax?

I've just caught up with the first PMQs duel between Cameron and Miliband, and it was startling to see just how easily the new Labour leader was allowed to score a hit on the issue of families with only one working parent being effectively discriminated against as a result of the threshold for the withdrawal of child benefit. Miliband's jibe that the Prime Minister "had no defence" was quite literally true. That marks a change, though, because the government did have a defence on the day the policy was announced - Philip Hammond breezily accepted on Newsnight that there would be a little "rough justice", but insisted that was unavoidable if the costs and complications of full-scale means-testing were to be avoided. It seems the penny has dropped that this wasn't such a winning line - but the fact that they haven't been able to come up with anything better in the intervening week is extremely telling. Cameron instead rather lamely answered the question he wished he'd been asked, and defended the general principle of withdrawing benefits from the wealthy.

In truth, of course, this isn't "a little" rough justice - as Miliband noted, there will be hundreds of thousands of families with a single working parent who lose out. And presumably as relative high-earners, these people are also to a significant extent natural Tory supporters. It starts to beg the question - could the controversy over the changes to child benefit be a slow-burner that eventually turns into Cameron's "poll tax"? After all, the poll tax was also a system that permitted lots of rough justice in the pursuit of maximum "simplicity". The Tories really should have learned their lesson by now - in any battle for public support between "simplicity" and "fairness", there will only ever be one winner.

*

Later in PMQs, Angus MacNeil spoke very eloquently on behalf on his constituents, the family of Linda Norgrove. Can we now expect some more ill-judged musings from Fraser Nelson on the subject of a Scottish politician getting above his station?

Does anyone recall something called "the respect agenda"? Run that past me again?

David Cameron's reference to the Megrahi release in his conference speech (courtesy of the Caledonian Mercury) -

"There are some red lines which we must never cross...the sight of that man responsible for the Lockerbie bombing being set free to get a hero’s welcome in Tripoli. No. It was wrong. It undermined our standing in the world. Nothing like that must ever happen again."

Leaving aside the irritating Blair-like 'stream of consciousness' party trick of trying to make it sound as if the sheer gravity of the subject has only just struck him mid-passage, it has to be said that Cameron is moving on to very, very dangerous territory with this rhetoric. It simply isn't possible for London politicians to credibly claim that they "respect" the devolution settlement unless they also accept that decisions that they personally feel are wrong not only can happen again, but almost certainly will, and indeed should. The powers transferred under the Scotland Act were not conditional upon being used in a way consistent with arbitrary "red lines" dreamt up by a Tory leader to win cheap applause at his party conference.

Was it legitimate for Cameron to attack his political opponents for a controversial decision? Absolutely. But to suggest that it must 'never' be 'allowed' to happen again, in order to protect 'our' interests...well, that sounds suspiciously like a threat, and one rooted in the hubris of an almost colonial mindset.

Cameron gives corpse of respect agenda a good kicking

What does David Cameron think he's doing ordering (for presumably he must have done) the British Ambassador in Washington to call the release of Megrahi a "mistake"? It was perfectly legitimate - albeit deeply misguided - for Cameron as leader of the Conservative party to express a critical view on the quasi-judicial decision of a member of the Scottish government. But for the official representative of the United Kingdom to be trashing the proper authorities of a part of the United Kingdom who followed due process to the letter is...well, bang out of order. Indeed, it's worse than that - I'd guess the impression it's intended to convey to an American audience is that the new UK government is in some way distancing itself from a "mistake" made by its own predecessors. Can there be anything more disrespectful than fuelling the (rather popular) fiction that the Scottish government either a) does not meaningfully exist, or b) dutifully takes its cue from London on such a grown-up matter as this?

As I understand it, part of the purpose of the "respect agenda" was to demonstrate to Scots that devolution works really well and that there is no need to move beyond it. Instead, Cameron has just helpfully identified a massive deficiency in the devolved settlement that only independence can possibly remedy - namely that our supposed "representatives" in foreign capitals are not merely unable to speak directly on our behalf, but are apparently going to be specifically instructed to undermine us in certain circumstances. Can you imagine the American ambassador in London criticising, say, the decision of the governor of Texas to put a British citizen to death, even if that governor was an ideological opponent of the incumbent president? If it's beneath the dignity of the UK government to allow its ambassador to defend the Scottish administration on a decision that was wholly within its own competence, then all he should have been told to do is explain that Megrahi's release was solely for the Scottish authorities to adjudicate upon, and therefore wasn't a matter for the British government or its representatives to express a view on.

False choice of the week

I've always had very mixed views about Tommy Sheridan, but he certainly spoke for me and millions of others when he responded to an infamous false choice in the following simple terms -

"I'm not with the terrorists, and I'm not with George W Bush either."

The false choice of this week appears to be - are you with the tens of thousands of people on Facebook who apparently believe that Raoul Moat is somehow "a legend", or are you with David Cameron, who believes that Moat was "a callous murderer, full stop, end of story"? My answer is neither. There is no such thing as a three word summary that can be regarded as the "end of story" for any complex human being, no matter how wicked his actions. But I suppose for many politicians a three-word soundbite will do for just about any occasion.

What is it with people? Why do we have this unquenchable urge to characterise anyone who commits a serious crime as either a hero or an irredeemably evil monster (usually the latter)? Indeed, it's not uncommon to hear about criminals self-righteously "taking the law into their own hands" when sharing a prison with a certain type of serious offender - can't they spot that there's just a slight touch of irony there? In the case of Moat, they would almost certainly have gone to the other extreme and welcomed him as a hero. Why? Because he had a vendetta against the police and his girlfriend, something they could easily identify with. It doesn't matter that in lashing out he took and wrecked the lives of innocents - simply because they could understand the impulse, the actions became heroic, regardless of their devastating consequences. I hope that the idiots who've joined Moat's tribute page on Facebook recognise that they've now sacrificed any trace of credibility the next time they feel like pontificating about how the likes of Maxine Carr - someone who behaved appallingly and heartlessly but did not, unlike Moat, actually take a life - should "rot in hell".

The truth is that Moat's actions were a manifestation of his own weaknesses, and an inability to rationalise his rage - a peculiar type of "heroism" for anyone to fawn over. Ironically, we now discover he was aware of his problems on some rudimentary level, and asked to see a psychiatrist. I'm not suggesting for a moment that he wasn't responsible for his own wicked actions and that he shouldn't have been severely punished for them had he lived, but I am saying that his actions were not his whole being, as the Prime Minister seems to believe. I think we like to demonise certain people and regard them as utterly beyond redemption mainly because we're frightened by the fact that, deep down, we recognise that they are not as different from us as we'd care to imagine, and that we all started life with some kind of potential for evil within us - had circumstances provided the trigger. We have to turn serious criminals into "inhuman" non-persons to convince ourselves that isn't really the case.

Or, occasionally, we can turn them into "legends" and bizarrely lionise the end product of their mental illness. Either course is equally irrational. Indeed, such a black-and-white worldview makes it extremely hard for someone like Moat to stop once they've started - a hero has no reason to stop doing exactly what he's doing, whereas a "monster" knows he's been left with no conceivable way of reconciling himself with the world, and feels he might as well go out with a bang.

Cam'n'Clegg face the audience with a fantastical false choice

Back in the days when Paul Merton had his own Channel 4 show, he recounted the story of how a woman had reacted to someone advancing republican views. "You don't want the Queen? So what do you want, then? Hitler?"

"You can't really argue with stupidity like that," Merton mused.

For some reason those words popped into my head as I was watching the performance of Nick Clegg and David Cameron on the hastily-arranged Face the Audience show. They were both determined to present us with an utterly fantastical false choice - either you accept every last dot and comma of the Budget, or you do absolutely nothing, and don't tackle the deficit at all, with all the problems that would cause down the line. Anyone would think VAT was the only tax that could possibly have been raised, or that there is some kind of legal cap on how much bankers can be penalised for their wrongdoing, and on how far the wealthy more generally can be asked to pay their fair share.

Clegg said at one point that he was sure he spoke for David Cameron in reassuring us that if only it had been possible to claw in all the necessary funds by hitting the bankers alone, that's what the coalition would have done in a trice. Well, I'm absolutely certain he doesn't speak for Cameron in saying that, and frankly I'm dubious about whether he even speaks for himself.

It struck me watching the programme that, if this government is going to survive its full five year term, there is going to have to be some kind of relaxation (even if only an informal one) of the normal principle of collective responsibility. Cameron and Clegg were both essentially defending a Tory Budget tonight, so it's no surprise that Clegg looked the most ill-at-ease. Liberal Democrat supporters looking for reassurance that the coalition has been worthwhile will have wanted to hear their leader say "OK, this is not exactly what we wanted to happen, but coalition is a constant compromise and we've been able to offset some of the worst effects". Instead, they saw him dying in a ditch trying to defend the Tory policies he was berating just a few weeks ago.

One point on which I can commend the government, however, is their apparent determination to stand firm on the ring-fencing of the overseas aid budget. A member of the audience tonight trotted out the now familiar suggestion (previously advanced by the likes of Irwin Stelzer) that much of that budget is poorly-targeted. That's undoubtedly true, which is an argument for making sure that every pound of the very small proportion of national wealth set aside for international development is properly prioritised and helps those who actually need it most. It's not an argument for clawing the wasted money back to the exchequer. If there's one group of people more vulnerable than those clobbered in Britain by George Osborne this week, it's the poorest of the poor in Third World countries.

Are the post-debate polls grossly misleading?

It was striking on News at Ten last night that the average 'worm rating' awarded by the panel of floating voters to each of the party leaders showed a startlingly different picture to the instant polls (and indeed to Tom Bradby's omniscient pronouncements on the same programme). Clegg was the winner, with Cameron in a dismal third. Now of course this can perhaps be explained by the small sample size, but it's just as likely down to a more sophisticated method of measuring opinion. The instant polls are essentially first-past-the-post verdicts on what are (albeit rigged) three-way contests, with David Cameron being declared the 'winner' on the dubious basis that a larger minority of respondents thought he was the best of the three than thought the same about Clegg. But even in his most positive poll (YouGov) Cameron was the favourite of just 41% of respondents, and the figure is as low as 35% with both ICM and ComRes. This tells you absolutely nothing about what the remaining 59-65% thought of Cameron's performance. If second preferences or average scores out of ten had been asked for by the pollsters, I suspect we'd be looking at a much more nuanced picture today than the 'Cameron victory' being gleefully reported by the right-wing press.

Still, perception (however misplaced) is everything when it comes to generating momentum, and my fear is the reporting of last night's events may move the Tories closer to overall majority territory. Heaven help us all.

Cameron's half-baked wheeze to out-American the Americans

It really comes to something when the leader of the British Conservative party appears to want the UK not just to adopt a presidential system, but a system that is in fact more presidential than the United States itself. In the US, there is no provision whatsoever for an extraordinary general election to be held to elect a new president should the incumbent resign in office - instead there is a line of succession to determine who will see out the remainder of the normal term of office. The most famous example is of course Gerald Ford, who was the wholly unelected American president for roughly the same period of time Gordon Brown has now served as Prime Minister without "his own mandate".

A number of commentators are scratching their heads and wondering aloud whether this new "no unelected PM" policy of Cameron's really is the impulsive, back-of-the-envelope job it appears to be. But it could just as easily be that this was always a planned move, designed as a pretext for recycling tried-and-tested vote-winning jibes about Gordon Brown running away from the verdict of the electorate, which would otherwise have been impossible to sustain beyond the date for the election being set. If that is the case, it simply makes it an even more disgraceful tactic.

Even today, there are still some arch-unionists who accuse the pro-devolutionists of 'constitutional vandalism' in the late 1990s for introducing an unstable settlement for partisan gain that was always going to have to be revisited later - well, it's difficult to know how else to characterise a proposal to essentially end the UK's status as a parliamentary democracy, purely for the short-term benefit of some positive headlines during just one day of an election campaign.

And make no mistake, the effective end of parliamentary democracy (already on its last legs) is exactly what Cameron's idea entails. Once it's established in law that general elections are de facto elections for the office of Prime Minister, the principal role of parliament becomes something akin to the American electoral college, ie. simply to rubber-stamp the electorate's 'choice of Prime Minister'. And if they fail to sustain the correct person in office for a full five years, they become 'faithless electors' against whom action will be taken - ie. automatic early dissolution. The idea that what is needed to restore trust in politics at this particular moment is to demand that members of parliament behave as lobby fodder to an even greater extent is deeply depressing.

But the reason that this proposal, if ever enacted (which I doubt) would have to be swiftly revisited is that it's based on an utterly half-baked premise. You simply can't credibly complain about a new Prime Minister who takes office in mid-term being 'unelected', if you're apparently quite happy that it remains the case that all Prime Ministers - including those who win general elections - are not directly or indirectly elected. They are, of course, appointed by the monarch. Logic dictates that if the law insists upon a direct personal mandate for an incoming PM in mid-term, it must do so at all other times as well.

A true constitutional reformer would have recognised that from the start.

Let's go fly a kite, up to the highest height

All this "invitation to join the government of Britain" business, the solemn launch against a stark industrial background, the 'little blue book' that really does look like a terribly sober induction guide for eager new recruits to the civil service...somehow I couldn't get out of my head a scene from Mary Poppins. You know the bit where the bank manager tries to 'inspire' the young boy Michael with thoughts of all the things he'll have a stake in if he will just hand his money over to them -

"You see, Michael, you'll be part of
Railways through Africa
Dams across the Nile
Fleets of ocean greyhounds
Majestic, self-amortizing canals
Plantations of ripening tea
All from tuppence, prudently
Fruitfully, frugally invested
In the, to be specific,
In the Dawes, Tomes
Mousely, Grubbs
Fidelity Fiduciary Bank!"

In which case, this is the cue for the electorate to run away, clutching their ballot papers tightly, shouting "but I don't want to join the government of Britain! I want to use this to feed the birds!"

What's the opposite of a non-denial denial?

The 'non-denial denial' is of course a long-established staple of politics, with perhaps the classic of its kind being Michael Heseltine's insistence that he could "conceive of no circumstances" in which he would challenge Mrs Thatcher for the Conservative leadership. Well, the current Conservative leader seems to be close to perfecting the polar opposite of the non-denial denial - perhaps it could be christened the 'non-confirming confirmation'. BBC Scotland reported in their evening news that David Cameron had committed the Conservatives to transferring more powers to the Scottish Parliament within the lifetime of his (hypothetical) first term of office. But in the excerpt of the actual interview with Cameron that was shown in the package, he - as far as I could see - committed the Tories to no such thing. Indeed, when he was specifically asked to do so, instead of answering he darted off onto a pedantic point about how he couldn't know the result of the election in advance, or how long the next parliament would last. Somehow I don't think the interviewer was asking him if he could commit to pushing through further powers for Holyrood if he lost the election, so his decision to respond with such absurd literalism is probably rather telling.

My guess is the only early action Cameron is committed to on devolution is the pursuit of some very long grass.

Scotland - know your place

We've heard a great deal in recent days - indeed for a lot longer than that - about how a Cameron government will show "respect for Scotland and strengthen devolution". This, however, is quickly qualified as having very little to do with what others might regard as showing respect or strengthening devolution - 'respect' seemingly does not cover respecting Scotland's right to have a voice on an issue as vital as Trident. Rather it is a "mutual" respect, which roughly translates as "Scotland - know your place". And 'strengthening devolution' does not appear to involve actually transferring further powers to the Scottish Parliament as proposed by the Calman Commission - you know, that body the Tories helped to establish. Instead it's all utterly cosmetic stuff about UK government ministers coming before the Scottish Parliament to answer questions - fine as far as it goes, but it does all seem eerily reminiscent of the non-reforms the Tory government introduced in the 1990s (ie. John Major going before the Scottish Grand Committee - wow) to avoid actually having to address the real issue of the Scottish democratic deficit. As Canon Kenyon Wright memorably said of those 1990s 'reforms' - "interesting, but appears to misunderstand the question".

As an aside, there is something that comes around for the 'Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party' only once a year. It's something called a 'Party Conference Broadcast'. Wouldn't it have been a mark of Cameron's professed 'respect' for Scotland to take just an hour out of his schedule to record a Scotland-specific broadcast, rather than recycling one of his English 'Cameron Direct' meetings? A trivial point maybe, but such things can often be the most revealing.

A cynic he may be, but Brown doesn't emote on cue

Looking around my old haunt today, I notice that many of the Conservative posters are spreading poison about the revelation that Gordon Brown wept during the recording of the forthcoming TV interview with Piers Morgan, talking about it in terms of Labour 'tactics'. One of the usual suspects rather risibly tries to read some significance into the fact that the 'top rated comment' on the issue on the Daily Mail website accuses Brown of exploiting his grief for electoral gain. Now, I wonder who was doing the rating?

I think Conservative supporters have got to be very, very careful about how they come at this. It's only a few short months since the near-impossible happened and Gordon Brown actually came out well from the controversy over his mis-spellings in a letter to the grieving mother of a military casualty, due to the sympathy provoked by the hysterical over-reaction in the Tory-supporting media. The way I read this is that Brown's decision to do an interview covering personal matters plainly was a tactical decision. It would also clearly have been agreed in advance that the death of his newborn daughter would not be off-limits, and that again would have been carefully weighed up. Tory supporters really can have no complaints about either of these points, given the way that David Cameron has brought his own son's illness and subsequent death into the public sphere, partly to underscore his personal commitment to the NHS - and any questioning of Cameron's sincerity would have certainly been greeted with outrage.

While I yield to no-one in my appreciation of Brown's many objectionable qualities, the one cynical thing he doesn't - or can't - do is emote on cue, in the way a Blair or Clinton could, and repeatedly did. He isn't an actor (at least not one of any quality), which paradoxically has been one of his biggest problems all along.