L'Ombre de l'Olivier

The Shadow of the Olive Tree

being the maunderings of an Englishman on the Côte d'Azur

03 June 2009 Blog Home : June 2009 : Permalink

Westminster in Denial

Who knew that some cunning cartographer had renamed the Thames as it passes the Houses of Parliament but really that's the only conclusion I can come up with as I read the news.

A month or so back I talked about the sinking Gordon deserting his rat. Well the well leaked reshuffle where he planned to desert the rest of the rats and get a new load after tomorrow's electoral disaster seems to have caused all sorts of rats to decide that they'd rather jump than be pushed.

But yet while there are endless reports that ZANU Labour Rank and File MPs are busy looking for alternative sources of employment because they can tell they won't get re-elected, not all of ZANU Labour's leadership seems to recognise the problem. Take the boy Dave (M):

Mr Miliband gave Mr Brown another headache yesterday by insisting that he wanted to remain as Foreign Secretary for another four years. “I’m focusing on my job. I have got four more years until I beat Ernie Bevin as the longest-serving foreign secretary,” he said.

At least we understand the source of the Nile renaming. It's Britain's oh so competent FCO and their political master. Just how does the boy Dave (M) expect to remain in government for four more years? He's the minister in a government that is about as unpopular as any UK government has ever been (various Stuarts, Peel's second stint (1841-46) are probably the main contenders) and which has to have a general election sometime in the next year. The chances of ZANU labour being in government after this election are currently about as likely as Iran and Israel signing a peace deal so even if the boy Dave (M) survives this reshuffle he's going to miss out on his target by some considerable margin.
 
The same Torygraph article also reports that Harriet Harperson has been partaking of FCO Koolaid:

Harriet Harman, Labour’s deputy leader, was forced into a desperate denial of claims that Mr Brown’s administration was in meltdown. “It is not the wheels falling off the Government,” she said.

Of course it is possible that she was cruelly cut off by the reporter and that she actually went on to say "in fact it is the government falling off the wheels" but one suspects not.