Fraser Nelson

If looked as if Alistair Darling were stuck on a groove on his Sky News interview. Michael Howard was famously asked the same question 13 times – Darling seemed to give the same answer as many times. I suspect his message was programmed by No10 because it has Brown’s fingerprints all over it. Here’s that message – repeated ad nauseum. “People are feeling the pressures, but it is driven by the fact that food world prices are up by 40% and oil has doubled in the last year. That’s feeding through. The key is we take action to reduce these oil prices and get lower prices at the pump, lower prices at the supermarket.” There are three elephants in the room, trampling on his argument: 1.

The Irish "no" vote just gets better and better. The Plan B, as Wolfgang Müünchau says in today's Financial Times, probably is to carry on without Ireland and create what many countries have wanted for some time: a two tier Europe. So the obvious question is: how do we sign up? Suddenly, Brown's decision to ratify the Lisbon Treaty becomes more than just a futile act of arrogance. It would wrongly place Britain amongst the enthusiasts, whereas the British public's position is identical to Ireland's: yes to EU, no to Lisbon. If this is an option, it is one that British government is honour bound to seize as this is, according to the European Commission's own opinion polls, what the public wants. But is honour a word in Gordon Brown's vocabulary? We shall see this week.

Is Davis' action really unprecedented? The latest issue of The House magazine has a piece by Vernon Bogdanor, perhaps the best politics academic in Britain. He names all previous by-election candidates, almost all of which changed party and believed they had a moral duty to seek a new mandate (Quentin Davies take note). Duchess of Atholl, 1938, Conservative to independent, Richard Acland, 1955, Labour to independent. Dick Taverne (now-Lord Taverne), 1973, Labour to Democratic Labour. Bruce Douglas-Mann, 1982, Labour to independent SDP. Of the above, only Taverne kept his seat. Bogdanor says the closest comparison is when 15 Ulster unionists resigned in 1986 over the Anglo-Irish agreement, ie to reinforce the policy of their party like Davis. 14 succeeded.

Eight decades ago, Britain gave Ireland back her sovereignty. Today, it seems the people of that glorious country have returned the favour. It’s too soon to know for sure if the “no” vote has prevailed, but all indications appear so. Yet again, the EU project has failed; unable to pass the tiniest bit of democracy from the European people. This tells you all you need to know about its true nature. There is something odious about a politicians’ project whose success depends on its ability to circumvent the people they purport to represent. For years their central deception has been encapsulated by the question: “do you want more powers to pass to the EU, or do you secretly hate foreigners?

I am just out of doing BBC news interview, where they were discussing the public reaction to Davis. Eveyone in Westminster thinks Davis is mad, loopy, gone off on one, etc. But 95% of the comments to the BBC's extensive listener and viewer response says this is a very welcome break from the tired identikit politics of Westminster. When I spoke to Davis this morning and asked him if he knew he'd be denounced as a madman, he said yes. But he said he genuinely believes in the cause,  and that he hopes the public would recognise this authenticity. It could just be that Davis is right, and the political class is wrong. That this 58 year old former soldier and businessman has found a modern theme that the Cameroons missed.

Should Britain join the Euro after all? Patrick Hennessy, political editor of the Sunday Telegraph, bravely asks the question over at Three Line Whip, arguing that one can no longer claim the British economy is doing better than the Eurozone's. A provocative point, certainly, and one we're likely to hear much more often as the consequences of Gordon Brown's reign of error at the Treasury hit mortgage owners and shoppers. My answer is pretty simple. One cannot conceive of a way that the Euro would help us. The arguments used ten years ago by the pro Euro campaign - more jobs, lower prices, increased trade - have been proven to be false. If they were true, there would be some sign of them in the Eurozone member countries. The City flourished outside the Eurozone.

Channel Four says it feels "dutybound" to examine on what ground Gordon Brown says of the 100 servicemen who died in Afghanistan that "they have paid the ultimate price but they have achieved something of lasting value." On its always welcome Snowmail email, Ch4 lists its own yardsticks to decide if things of lasting value have been achieved and declares that "reliable measures of these things are scarce". Not too scarce, actually. Here are my thoughts on their seven tests .... 1. Territory safely held - all of Helmand is safe, apart from three districts near the border (pictured). The main areas, including the Pashtun capital Kandahar, have been made safe by the British. 2. Schools reopened: 2,000 schools have been rebuilt in the last five years, 6.4 million children (including 1.

Should the Prime Minister (and, increasingly, each party leader) name and honour the recent fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan at PMQs? I had thought this quite respectful, but when I was in Afghanistan I was surprised to find a number of soldiers opposed to it. Their problem is that it reads to the nation a narrative of failure when the incredible success of the military during the turnaround against the Taleban barely gets a mention. I raised this with Brig Mark Carelton-Smith, commander of Taskforce Helmand, when I was in Lashkar Gah and I print his response in my News of the World column today. “The casualty rate is not high,” he said. “Yet a steady drumbeat of casualties does eat away at stamina and resolve that a country needs to keep its nerve.

Strikingly good BBC Question Time last night, the highlight of which was David Miliband being asked if he could save the Labour Party. He avoided that question, but his answers to the others seemed to suggest he is ruling himself out of the job because he made so many mistakes. First, he admitted he became Foreign Secretary without knowing that Robert Mugabe had been given an honorary knighthood – something that has been a contentious issue since Blair was dragged into it five years ago. Then, on 42 days, Miliband claimed “you can be held for up to four years in France” – it’s actually four days, as Shami Chakrabarti lost no time in pointing out.