Alex Massie

I never really saw the point of the Chilcot Inquiry and nothing that has happened in the years since it first sat has persuaded me I was wrong to think it liable to prove a waste of time, effort and money. Dear old Peter Oborne pops up in today's Telegraph to confirm the good sense of these suspicions. Chilcot, you see, is most unlikely to satisfy Tony Blair's critics, far less provide the "smoking gun" proving that the Iraq War was a stitched-up, born-again conspiracy promoted by George W Bush and eagerly, even slavishly, supported by Anthony Charles Lynton Blair. This is not an argument about truth. If Chilcot fails to deliver a report confirming the existence of this kind of plot then this will be taken as proof that plot really existed.

The Scottish government published a paper on the national economy today that, according to Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, makes the case for independence. You can read the pamphlet here or the BBC's summary of it here. Most of it was relatively uncontroversial. As Salmond himself said "even" Unionists agree Scotland could survive and perhaps even prosper as an independent nation state. It would be depressing if this were not the case after 300 years of Union.

Parliament is a "brothel". The state is an enterprise of "thieves" engaged in a conspiracy against "the good little people" and the "humble housewife". Time, then, for a party that will stand up for "the little man, the downtrodden, the trashed, the ripped off, the humiliated". Not, as you might suspect, the most recent UKIP manifesto but, rather, the sentiments expressed by Pierre Poujade during the run-in to the 1954 elections to the French National Assembly. Poujade's party, the Union to Defend Shopkeepers and Artisans,  shocked France's political elite by winning 2.5 million votes and sending 55 deputies to Paris.

Clearly it is not a good idea for the Prime Minister's chums to call members of the Conservative party "swivel-eyed loons". No, not even at a "private dinner party". I suspect that the identity of the "senior Conservative" who is "socially close" to David Cameron will be out by close of play Sunday and that he - it seems most unlikely it is a she - will, as James says, be removed from whatever position of responsibility he currently enjoys. I also suspect most voters will have no idea who this man is even once his name is revealed. That doesn't matter. Adrian Hilton wrote a good piece at ConservativeHome last year detailing his experiences with falling Tory membership in Beaconsfield.

I am not quite sure I understand why Nigel Farage opted to launch UKIP's Aberdeen by-election campaign in Edinburgh. Then again, UKIP are a puzzling party. In any event, it all went rather well. Not just because forcing Nigel Farage to "flee" and take "sanctuary" in a pub is the kind of hardship up with which the UKIP leader can fondly put, but rather because the sight of Mr Farage being jostled and shouted down by left-wing "radicals" is one of the few things liable to provoke some measure of sympathy for UKIP north of the border. UKIP thrives on farce and chaos. The goons from something calling itself the "Campaign for Radical Independence" ensured that a visit that would otherwise passed almost un-noticed received plenty of coverage. Heckuva job, lads.

I shall be on hiatus for the next week as I'm getting married on Saturday and I have an inkling that this is no time to be concerned that people are wrong on the internet. I leave you with my latest  Think Scotland column in which I consider some of the topics raised by Douglas Alexander in the Judith Hart Memorial Lecture he delivered last week. Douglas Alexander, probably the most thoughtful Scottish Labour MP (though I accept you may consider that only a minor accomplishment), delivered a typically interesting lecture last week. In it he suggested Scotland needs “a politics of opponents. Not enemies. We need a discourse of political difference, not a politics that descends into personal destruction.” Indeed.

As I type this, pundits in London are stiffening themselves for the tough task of over-interpreting local election results and projecting wildly unrealistic forecasts for the next general election on the back of a mid-term election in which the electorate is of an entirely different type to that which will vote in 2015. It's a grim job but someone has to do it and it's better that it be done with enthusiasm than with any sense of proportion. Mercifully, my friend and former boss Iain Martin is not one of those types. Be that as it may, however, he has written a column for Friday's Telegraph that is both typically acute and evidence of how the Tory winds no longer blow in David Cameron's favour.

UKIP are buoyant and, all of a sudden, everyone's favourite protest-group. In a curious way, the confirmation that many of their candidates really are boggle-minded, eyes-popped extremists of one stamp or another almost helps UKIP. It confirms that they're not like the other political parties and encourages people to adopt them as the Sod it, I'm just mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more party. (These people tend not to be attracted to libertarian parties; just as well UKIP is not a libertarian party.) But UKIP should enjoy this moment while they can. They will remain a presence on the political scene and they will fare splendidly at the next elections to the european parliament. Nevertheless, Farage-Mania seems likely to have a pretty short half-life.

Is it possible for a government minister to give a speech that is not a "keynote address"? That was my first thought upon reading Maria Miller's speech at the British Museum last week. My second thought was remembering the old saw that any time a government minister talks about "culture" it is sensible to reach for your Browning.  Thirdly, I recalled that Maria Miller is the kind of Commissar whose officials think it sensible to threaten journalists. So I suppose that I was predisposed to think poorly of her speech on the economic importance of the arts. Well, it was still a rotten speech that lived-down to these low expectations.

Freddy Gray is quite correct: the drive to rehabilitate George W Bush is suspicious. It is also a dog that won't hunt. It is true that recent opinion polls have reported that Dubya is more popular than when he left office but this is surely chiefly a consequence of the public forgetfulness. Returning to the spotlight can only be bad news for Bush's reputation. It will remind people why they were so pleased to be rid of him in the first place. Because, in the end, an administration bookended by the worst terrorist attack in American history and the gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression can't be spun as much of a success. It just can't. True, presidential reputations change over time.

What is the point of Britain's nuclear deterrent? If it is an insurance policy it is a remarkably expensive one that might not, in any case, ever be honoured. I suspect that, more importantly, retaining an independent [sic] nuclear capability is a psychological crutch for politicians who fear that leaving the nuclear club would somehow make it harder for Britain to remain a member of the Top Nation club. And perhaps it would. This is not necessarily a trivial thing. It would change the way we think of ourselves and might, in some sense, be considered an admission of defeat or as some kind of retreat. No Prime Minister wants to be the guy remembered as that guy and this, plus other institutional pressures helps make the case for replacing Trident. But at what cost?

So, is Barack Obama a wimp or just another lame-duck second-term President? Maureen Dowd, in her typically sophomoric fashion, appears to believe that the failure to pass gun control legislation shows that the President has not been paying enough attention to Aaron Sorkin movies. Tim Stanley, who at least knows something of how Washington works, suggests this failure reveals Obama as a lame-duck. Today's New York Times piles on with an article asking, essentially, why oh why BHO can't be more like LBJ. As is so often the case, a presidential setback must be attributed to an absence of Presidential willpower. The Cult of the Presidency is an eternal flame that can never, ever, be extinguished.