Constitutional Deform

Yours truly has been down the beach enjoying the glorious summer sun all day. Why, then, did El Gordo have to spoil it all by opening his disconnected gob? I avoided Marr's much-trumpeted interview assiduously this morning, knowing full-well that it would contain the kind of platitudinous, backtracking, soundbitten horseshit that is Brown's bankrupt oratorical currency. But I failed. This afternoon I succumbed to curiosity and read the Sunday Times coverage of it. What I found was not pleasant and is lingering in the atmosphere like a disowned fart.

Dan Hannan's deoderising is the best so far, so I'll leave it to him:

Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse, along comes Gordon Brown with a proposal for statutory regulation of MPs. Prime Minister, it was the "I have acted within the letter of the rules" mentality that brought Parliament to this pass. You cannot compel moral behaviour by legislation; on the contrary, such laws replace a culture of conscience with a culture of compliance.

The PM, in an unwontedly pharisaical aside, said that some recent revelations "offended my Presbyterian conscience". But any good Presbyterian would see that external regulation smothers personal responsibility. (See here for the full case against the Broon's abominable idea.)

Yes, the House of Commons needs an external regulator. Happily, it already has one: the electorate. Have we so little confidence in ourselves as voters that we are content to surrender our right to choose our representatives to a government-appointed quango? Is this what Coke and Hampden and Pym fought for? What fools our fathers were if this be true.

It's a pretty simple point but it's one that liability Brown is incapable of grasping: there was nothing wrong with the expenses 'system'; the problem is the MPs who exploited it. Revealing their utter turpitude through temptation is, in fact, the system's triumph. Then again, with his deflection tactics and mishmash 'reforms' (which, as Hannan implies, will only actually serve to deform our democracy still further), perhaps he knows exactly what he's doing - sort of. He will say, do, destroy, obfuscate, bully, cheat, steal, burn, ruin and annihilate anyone and anything to cling on to power. So wrecking British democracy will be a stroll in the park for this new Caligula.

“We will be the reforming party on the constitution. It’s always where I have wanted to be.”

Priceless. If you're going to be a hypocrite, might as well be a massive one. If you're going to tell a lie, it might as well be an absolute whopper. He's clearly got Balls. People of Britain, deliver the crushing defeat to this tyrant on Thursday that will start the countdown to his demise. It's not just desirable now, it's vital.