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Last week began with David Cameron and Nick Clegg renewing their Coalition marriage vows in a Basildon tractor factory. Gone were the heady days of the June 2010 Rose Garden marriage. The same fate awaited their original vow of “we are all in it together”. Surrounded by tractors, they unceremoniously downgraded the Rose Garden declaration to singular reference to an “us two” perspective. i.e., Dave and Nick, who now look more like the “last two standing” in this coalition. Cameron’s drubbing and Nick Clegg’s annihilation in the UK wide Council elections resulted in a hurried rewrite of the Queen’s Speech where Cameron gave into demands from his rightwing not to legislate on same sex marriage and downgrade Nick Clegg’s Lords Reform Bill.

Bad Week?

The week began badly for the Prime Minister with bad Election results; faltering remarriage vows; a weak Queen’s Speech and ended with more damaging evidence to the Leveson Inquiry pushing Cameron further into the centre of the News International debacle. Sending a text to Rebecca Brooks following her resignation as Murdoch’s head honcho and signing it of with, “Lots of Love DC” may take more explaining to Mrs Cameron than to the Leveson Inquiry when he appearers before it this month.

“Glasgow belongs to me” was the SNP humming tune going into last week’s Scottish Council elections. Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon were so cock sure of a SNP victory in Glasgow, they had pre-ordained to launch their Referendum Campaign from Glasgow three weeks after the election.   What they planned as a “rocket launch” will now be more akin to a damp squib. The immortal words of Robert Burns in his ode to a Mouse, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, gang aft agley” will now be resonating amongst the SNP faithful, particularly Nicola Sturgeon who thought she had Glasgow in the bag before Alex Salmond’s close rapprochement with Rupert Murdoch was exposed.

South Lanarkshire

As in Glasgow, the local SNP in South Lanarkshire were consumed with visions of grandeur believing their own hype of winning control of South Lanarkshire Council.  Labour not only held their vote but increased their councillors from 32 to 33 (one short of overall control). The Queen’s Speech next week is already being watered down as a result of the drubbing Cameron/Clegg got last week in the UK wide elections. All eyes are now on the Leveson Inquiry where later this month Cameron; Clegg; Osborne and Alex Salmond will appear under oath.

The panic caused by a conservative Cabinet member telling motorist to fill their tanks and jerry-cans was not a mistake of an imbecilic lone minister. It was a deliberate Coalition ploy to shift the debate away from the Granny Tax, hot pasties, fuel tax increases etc that saw the conservative support drop 10% in the three days following the Budget. Then just when they thought it couldn’t get worse a Conservative Party fundraiser was caught on camera in a newspaper sting spilling the beans on “£250,000 donor dinners with Dave”.

Sacking offence

The fall guy of this sting just happened to be their senior treasurer in charge of fundraising. A multi millionaire buddy of Cameron and Osborne who had himself donated a reported £3M to their cause. His punishment for being caught spilling the beans on Cameron’s donor dinners was swift and immediate. His sacking was like in a scene out of Alan Sugar’s Apprentice, “You’re fired”. When the treasurer hit the dust attention then moved to demands for the jerry-can Cabinet Secretary to get the “Alan Sugar”. Downing Street’s response was to batten down the hatches and bunker down until after Easter. Hoping for a resurrection me thinks?

When Gordon Brown was Chancellor there was always an air of expectancy of the unknown and unleaked, in the run-up to his Budgets. MP’s gathered with cautious expectations, some with trepidation but very few had an inkling of its content. Brown was the master at teasing the Press hacks with titbits of misinformation in the run-up but always kept the big announcements for the House of Commons. Prime Minister Blair often complained that Gordon didn’t tell him the full contents of his Budgets until it was ready for presentation to Parliament. We are told that this year’s Budget was agreed with the Coalition quartet of Messrs Cameron, Clegg, Alexander and Osborne. For ever to be known as the Osborne & Co Budget.

Wrong choices

At a time when household bills are soaring for all middle and low incomes families George Osborne & Co made the wrong choices. A £3 billion Granny Tax raid on pensioners; increased Fuel duty; pushed 1.3 million taxpayers earnings over £32,000 out of 20% tax band into 40% whilst at the same time cutting 50% tax for 300,000 top rate payers, 14,000 of whom will get a £40,000 tax cut each. Bankers earning £5M/year will get a £250,000 tax bonus from the Prime Minister and Chancellor. They may all be in it together, but we certainly are not.

The six young soldiers who were killed by a Taliban bomb in the Afghan desert last week took the total fatal casualties of our Armed Forces to over 400. The Government and NATO seek continually to reassure us that the Taliban are being defeated when all the evidence indicates the opposite. The truth is that, the NATO forces are at best holding the Taliban at bay, pushing them into the mountains whilst the Afghan government which is overwhelmingly corrupt and incompetent is manifestly failing in the task of getting its own forces prepared to secure and protect their country when NATO withdraws in 2014. When our own Prime Minister continues with the mantra that our soldiers’ mission in Afghanistan is to keep the country safe from al-Qaeda terrorism on British soil, he sounds increasingly less convincing with every reported loss of our incredibly brave Forces.

Tycoon Tax

The squirming of Nick Clegg and his fellow Liberal Democrat millionaires to look different from Cameron’s Conservative millionaires pre-budget, borders on the pathetic. With almost every member of the Cabinet  millionaires and all living in large mansions, support for a tycoon tax inside Cabinet is very unlikely. Alex Salmond’s Scottish Government will not want a mansion or a tycoon tax either.

When the Prime Minister announced on 13 July 2011 that Lord Justice Levison would lead a two-part inquiry investigating the role of the Press, Politicians and Police in the phone-hacking scandal, Downing Street  believed that kicking the “hacking scandal” down the road with a two year public inquiry would take the heat away from the Prime Minister; particularly his relationship with former top executives inside Rupert Murdoch’s News International empire; e.g. the former News of the World Editor Andy Coulson who left Murdoch to be his Press Officer and Rebecca Brooks, the former CEO News International. This week’s revelations to Levison from the Metropolitan Assistant Deputy Commissioner, Sue Aker exposed a level of police and media corruption that was more akin to Chicago in the 1920’s.

Goings on

Levison began his inquiry saying the central question for him would be, “who guards the guardians?”  The goings on inside Downing Street this week since Sue Aker’s evidence exposed rifts between top advisors and Civil Servants that may or may not have something to do with Levison. The sabbatical/resignation of the PM’s top guru may also be coincidental. Smoking mirrors only hide the truth until the haze clears. There is a lot of smoke still to clear before Levison is over.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer is already spinning red herrings in the run up to his Budget later this month. The flat Earthers that coalesce within the Conservative led Coalition remain gridlocked in their denial of the pending recession that they refuse to navigate away from. To be fair not all Ministers share Osborne’s stubborn denial. One Lib/Dem minister said this weekend, “The necessary first step is to get out of a state of denial”. I have written to Chancellor Osborne supporting a cut in VAT and proposing he looks at cutting income tax at the lower end of earnings. This government is set to take thousands of pounds out of family incomes when their Benefit and Working tax credit cuts kick in 1^st April. Bankers get the plaudits from this shameless Chancellor whilst he punishes hard working families.

Rammy

The House of Commons bar was not the only place to see battles commence this week. The American billionaire Mr Donald Trump declared war on his “very good” friend Alex Salmond threatening a punch up in the Scottish courts if he didn’t stop the proposed 11 wind farm turbines 2.7 miles offshore, from his luxury Golf Course Estate. I bet Salmond bottles it and  gives into Trump. You read it here first.

There may not be much to laugh about these days but during a 3 day sabbatical from Parliament last week in Monkland’s Hospital I was cheered up with a giggle when Prime Minister Cameron dropped into Edinburgh to meet Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond for tea and shortbread. The tea was barely poured when the first shots was fired, “Show me what you’ve got” and “Let’s have the meat” Salmond demanded from his guest from that place below Gretna. Ah, but Cameron had a SNP bullet proofed vest and was quick to return fire “show me yours first”. That had me chuckling especially when after their meeting ended Alex dived in front of TV cameras making a virtue out of demanding answers from Cameron on the same issues he has refused to spell out to Scotland about his own policy and programme for separation.

OK Corral?

The usually sycophantic Scottish media were not impressed. They had been promised a showdown of OK Corral proportions. But It lacked the oomph and the gunfight fire power. After an hour and half David thanked Alex for his shortbread and jetted off to Paris to meet another close confidante French President Sarkozy.

The Conservative led coalition hit the buffers again this weekend thanks to their own MPs publically briefing that the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley and his Health Bill should go.  David Cameron was clinging onto him by his finger tips whilst seeking to reassure Lansley that he has his full support and that his job was safe. The gossip around Westminster was not as reassuring as the PM’s warm words.  Over the weekend three senior Tories inside cabinet were briefing against him, whilst on BBC’s Andrew Marr show the Lib/Dem’s Deputy Leader called for Lansley to go.

Chaired

I chaired the Health Bill through its Common’s Committee stages and witnessed firsthand the tensions inside the Committee that is currently unfolding in the House of Lords. Even Conservative bloggers have begun briefing against Lansley saying, “He should be taken out and shot”. The PM will resist the political assassination of his Health Secretary for now, but with the Lib/Dems leadership calling for him to go, will Cameron face them down along with his own dissidents inside Cabinet to keep Lansley, or will he seek to calm the waters by promising to move him on in a Spring reshuffle whilst accepting more Lords amendments to the Bill? My money is on the latter.