Yorkshire Post

Hilary Armstrong, Labour`s Chief Whip, has managed to avoid the usual rows over her Select Committee appointments because the Parliamentary Committee stepped in to stop some of the lunacies the Whips were inclined to in their desire to use Select Committee appointments as a form of patronage and discipline. Gwyneth Dunwoody stays in place as a powerful critic on Transport. Some attempts to give former ministers a nice little retirement niche as committee chairs are cancelled and a few rebels, like Andrew McInley, given places.

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Yorkshire Post

Tony’s on a roll. Last week had its wild fluctuations but each turn of fortune was so well handled by the Great Helmsman that even the downs put him up.

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Yorkshire Post

Richard Whiteley`s sad death is more awful because Richard was enjoying his fame, his life, his fans, and his OBE so much. Now he`s cut off in his prime, but knowing Richard he would have loved to be here to see the enormous response to his death.

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Yorkshire Post

The European Union was invented to provide a stage for failing politicians to pretend to be statesmen even though they no longer had empires.

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Yorkshire Post

The prevailing happiness in Labour ranks at the Dead Parrot performance in Europe is becoming deleted by second thoughts. It boosts Tony`s short career prospects.

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Yorkshire Post

The row over the fate of the unloved Euro-Constitution repeats the Dear Parrot sketch in Monty Python’s Other Flying Circus. When he brought the good news to the House Jack Straw played not John Cleese but the parrot, which he came to praise not to bury. No unseemly rejoicing, though Jack is as much relieved as anyone. No death certificate. Merely a postponement of the Referendum Bill.

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Yorkshire Post

We cracked open a celebratory cup of cocoa in the Mitchell household at the French referendum result. That`s the nearest I`ve got to being en fete since I was arrested for being drunk and disorderly on Bingley Grammar’s School exchange with Auxerre some time back in the fourth republic.

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Yorkshire Post

Becoming a statesman. I came down from Leeds on Sunday suitably dressed as a new revolutionary jeans, sweater, hoodie like any other teenager for the Tory Leadership. The lady pushing the trolley stopped. ”Don’t I know you? You’re a politician?...”

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Yorkshire Post

The solution to the Blair Brown rivalry and the problem of when Tony hands over the chalice he`s poisoned is blindingly simple. Even ESN Whips should see it.

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Yorkshire Post

This election has seen the Strange Death of Tony Blair and I’m amazed at the high level of anti-Tony abuse we’re getting. It`s almost as if he`d become Harold Wilson. I tell people he’ll soon. I have the answer to why and how. If we win with a hugely reduced majority he`ll go quick. Otherwise he`ll stay to lead the campaign for the Euro Constitution (yes, he’s still crazy after all these years).He’ll be defeated on that.Partly because he’s leading it. Then he’ll go.All that will of course be next year.

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Yorkshire Post

Experienced, older MPs have learned to ignore party manifestos. Tories do so because in the last three elections they’ve been such rubbish. We do so because they’ve zig-zagged so amazingly. In 1983 I was going to nationalise anything that moved, pull out of the Common Market, as it then was, and drop nuclear weapons, preferably on President Reagan. By the 1997 election I wasn’t going to do anything very much except smile benignly so as not to frighten the City.

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Yorkshire Post

All Hail the Power of Campbell`s name. Let Media Prostrate Fall. Not quite how we sang it at Charlestown Methodist Chapel (before it became a carpet warehouse) but a victory anthem as the war of Alistair’s Ego ends with three dead, the BBC grovelling at the feet of the conqueror and government acquitted on all charges.

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