Spam, Shag and Turd

'The problem is,' writes Peter Hitchens today, 'that people don't like the Tories any more, just as they have stopped liking Spam, Austin Princess cars and shag tobacco.' I'm not sure how shag tobacco is different from just tobacco and I think Spam is due for a revival. The Austin Princess ('A triumph of British engineering and design.') was known - with good reason - as 'the Flying Turd' by the guys who made it, but I'm sure enough voters to swing a couple of seats remember it with fond memories. But, of course, Hitchens has a point and, as I have said, it is beginning to look as though the Tories are on the way out. Perhaps the Conservative Party is, indeed, a Flying Turd, amusing in theory but not desirable in practice. Its one hope is that, after the next election, Gordon Brown unleashes his inner Leninist, thereby restarting real politics and driving all thinking people back into the embrace of the Turd. The problem with this is that Brown's been a stealthy Leninist for some time and yet still he wins the support of a press that has convinced itself he is actually quite right wing. There's nothing quite so deluded as a deluded newspaper. Iain Dale has suggested there may be a staff revolt against the Mail's pro-Brown posture, but this sounds like wishful thinking. So, yes, we might indeed by witnessing the big political flush.

PS. The Independent is on to the Mail-Brown story, suggesting a rift between Paul Dacre and his proprietor.