Our soon-to-be-former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, is off on his travels again. This time, he's taking a short break from saving the world, in order to save Northern Ireland. As the Guardian breathlessly reports, their little eyes shining with excitement:

"..the prime minister flew to Belfast tonight with his Irish counterpart, Brian Cowen, to try to rescue the power-sharing executive..

Brown is attempting to broker a deal between Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist party to devolve policing and criminal justice powers to Northern Ireland."

Oh wow. Is it a bird? Is it a 'plane? No, its a fucking showboating politician, with a million other more important things to do.

But as we all know, Gordon absolutely fucking loves this kind of thing. Never happier than when he's grabbing the controls, bossing everuone about, and striding manfully from meeting to pointless meeting, as far away from Westminster as possible.  If Blair hadn't nicked it already, in a similar context. Gordon would doubtless have solemnly informed us that he 'felt the hand of history' on his shoulder.

And, as we all also know, if there's one thing he loves more than that, in fact more than anything, it's bashing those eeevil Tories. McDoom considers a day in which he hasn't attacked or misrepresented the Conservative party as a day completely wasted.

So he must be abso-lewtly, as he would say, delighted at the chance to do both of his favourite things at once. A wank and a Mars Bar? Ohh, yes please.

So Gordo' has taken time out of his busy 'saving everything' schedule to let it be known that, in spite of his heroism, the peace process is in danger, because them Tories are .. err .. talking to Unionists


Hang on, Broon. Hang on a fucking minute. Did you forget that The Tories have already formed a pact with the Ulster Unionist party? Remember? They're going to put up joint candidates in Northern Ireland's parliamentary seats.


But no. Gordon has apparently told aides of his 'astonishment' at this. He believes:

"..the Conservatives are endangering the Northern Ireland peace process by adopting a pro-unionist stance in breach of the bipartisan approach which dates back nearly 20 years"

And that's not all.  The main part of the smear is yet to come. Oh yes.

According to Gordon and his spinmieisters, the worst of this tawdry episode is - and you might want to sit down here - these talks are taking place 'at an English Country Estate'. Oh no! Look everybody, the class war is on again.

What on earth could the Conservatives be doing on an 'English Country Estate'? Perhaps they're all drinking port from peasants' skulls. Perhaps later they'll hunt down a fox and beat it to death with copies of the Koran. Don't hold back Gordon: if you're going to smear, go large, mate.


What a lot of fucking bollocks. You lying fucking spin-doctors. You gullible, lazy fucking media.

Hatfield House may once have been a private 'Country Estate', but now it's just one of the hundreds Golf 'n' Corporate Hospitality venues that litter the landscape.

It's just an upmarket Holiday Inn. You can go and get married there, for fuck's sake, or go for a weekend in the spa with your Diary Secretary.

But why acknowledge that, McDoom, when you can re-re-re-ignite the class war, accusing those Tory toffs of lurking in a Country Estate, undermining all your heroic last ditch efforts?

Why, Gordon, can you not just ever get on with the job at hand. Bend your efforts toward solving the hundreds of enormous issues that face you (and us) and fucking forget about smearing the opposition. Just for five fucking minutes?

You useless bastard.

Related articles

• Sinn Fein discuss talks collapse (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Gordon Brown flies in for crisis talks over Northern Ireland (telegraph.co.uk)
• Tory meeting with unionists threatens Ulster peace, warns Brown (guardian.co.uk)

An opportunity has arisen for David Cameron to put some clear blue water (or at least, some murky brown swill) between his troughers and those in the Labour party.

One thing is clear about the latest batch of troughers reported by the Daily Telegraph: these bastards are fucking rolling in it.

No mortgages, multiple properties owned outright. Swimming pools. Roses extensive enough to need tens of bags of horseshit. They've been sitting on their country estates gnawing on the bones of peasants (yes, they eat their staff when they're too old to toil on the estate), watching their wealth grow, not frantically 'flipping' grubby little flats to top up their income.

The Labour MP's who've had to work their way up the property ladder (and when did they find the time to do that, for fuck's sake?) can't just jump off the merry-go-round. The money they claimed is tied up, in property that's still losing value (cheers Gordon). They can apologise (ha!), resign or run around clucking, but what they'll find it very hard to do is to write a cheque for tens of thousands by the end of this week.

For the "Tory Grandees", on the other hand, this is a piece of piss. In the same way as Bankers can ostentatiously pay themselves a dollar a year because they took in 10 million a year for the last five fucking years, these buggers can probably find this much money down the back of their great-great-great grandfather's Chesterfield.

So Dave, tell each of the egregious eight to pay back their claims, immediately and in full, and very publicly.

Then ask, over and over again, whenever you see a microphone, why the Labour MP's aren't doing the same.



UPDATE: smart man, that Dave. The Telegraph says they've paid the money back. See CF gloating here.


_

Whippet? No - paid for it on expenses

Dave "call me Dave" Cameron is probably not very comfortable right now. The generally held view seems to be that the Daily Telegraph will spin the bottle tonight so that it points at the Tories, and a lot of nasty stuff about the Shadow cabinet will pour out.

Naturally the Labour spin-machine will crank into action, and -- doubtless with a lot of help from Nick Robinson and the Today Program -- attempt to push their own troughing out of the limelight, to be replaced by shocking revelations that George Osborne also has a patio heater that we, the tax payers, have a 90% stake in.

The sphere-that-we-call-Blog is alive with criticisms of the .. er .. lack of criticism of the Cabinet's troughing coming from HM's Opposition today. Guido leads the charge, querying the "Strange Silence of the Opposition", and many others agree.

Iain Dale, after running around excitedly all last night and this morning like a Sunny-Delighted toddler, has gone all quiet (tired? Bless) and not blogged about 'Profligate' all afternoon. Wonder why?

CF, whilst leaning to the right, could not be said to be a whole-hearted supporter of the Conservatives but, like a kebab after a late-night drinking session, BluLabour are pretty much all that's on the menu right now, and if there's anything damaging enough to give Gordon the upper hand, and he dives for a snap election and he somehow scrapes a tiny majority ... well, then we're fucked. Say it ain't so, Dave.

Doubtless the Tories have worked this out for themselves, but in spite of that, no pre-emptive action has been taken. No-one's resigned, or even burst into tears and owned up. Either they're all quietly confident that they're clean (well, at least relatively clean) , or they're working out which pair of Chino's to take to Provence, and which to leave in their, sorry our, London flat.

Dave? Don't go to bed too early tonight...


UPDATE: clearly, Dave reads this blog (who doesn't?), and it's stung him into action. He sent an email to CF (well, and everyone else) earlier, saying

"The end of the week has been dominated by expenses stories - and I expect there will be many more over the coming months, from all parties. I understand why people are angry about this .. This is just the first step to a cleaner, more open system. Slowly and surely we're going to re-build the trust between politicians and the people they serve."

From all parties? So, getting a little bit of apology in ahead of the accusations, eh?