Fraser Nelson

Francis Urquhart will be spinning in his fictional grave. Once Tory whips were the MI5 of the Commons. They put a bit of stick about, knew every skeleton in every closet - and provided the  best early-warning to the leadership. So Cameron should have been warned about the full horrors of the Conway crisis months ago - now he's fire fighting. And today he’s taken a gamble – he’s saved the Sunday papers time and announced 70 of his MPs employ family members. He wants to take the initiative cleaning this mess up – and portray his party as the broom, not the dust. But he won't know what lurks in that dust and I suspect his clueless whips won’t be able to help.

There's an old joke that the word "lies" is banned in the House of Commons because it would be used so often that you'd get no business done. The actual reason is that MPs (hilariously) judge themselves above telling untruths. Yet we do hear rather shameless porkies at PMQs. And Tiberius makes a point: why don't Team Cameron object more about Brown misleading the House like Boris Johnson did today?   One of Brown's main tactics is using misinformation, repeated with such force that no one objects to it (such as "Tory cuts" in the last election where the Tories, alas, would have raised spending and the tax burden with it). So why not take issue with it?

After saying he wouldn't withdraw the whip from Derek Conway last night, Cameron has finally performed the U-Turn and done so now. Good. A night of dithering is better than a decade of it. So all eyes now on Old Bexley & Sidcup Conservative Association (a rather bashful lot, judging by their photo gallery) - will they deselect him? And what do CoffeeHousers think - is withdrawing the whip punishment enough? Or is it time for him to be deselected like Howard Flight was for talking about tax cuts?

James Purnell made his Marr debut today, filled with the Brownite script. Our new Work & Pensions Secretary should have looked more closely at those fake statistics he was given to regurgitate, because he repeated the most outrageous claim they make: that Britain has reached full employment. As he told Marr:- “We used to even worry as the Labour Party if we could commit to aiming for full employment. Now we’ve reached it. We have the lowest unemployment for 30 years.” If he genuinely believes this, God help us. I recommend he downloads this table (click here) from his own department, memorises its most egregious points, and sees what “full employment” soundbite means in the real world.

Andy Burnham was named “minister to watch” at the Spectator/Threadneedle parliamentarian of the years awards 2006. He has not disappointed us, replacing Purnell as Commissar of Culture. He reacted as if he’d won the pools. His beloved Liverpool being European City of Culture in 2008, and all that (quite right too, splendid city). But I suspect his joy comes from moving out of the Treasury when he was struggling to explain his way out of Northern Rock and the credit crunch. Just as ageing pop stars surround themselves with models in pop videos to look younger, so Brown brings the young bucks centre stage. If only he'd done this sooner, rather than claim (as he did at a private dinner recently) that Hain's fate was out of his hands.

For the three hours after Hain resigned, several names flew - none James Purnell. But thinking about it, his appointment makes sense. Aged 37 he will add zest to Brown's team, and he knows the DWP (he was pensions minister until Brown took over). He gave his first-ever interview to me in June (read it here) and I quizzed him about welfare. He'd stonewall, saying his brief was pensions. He'll be getting his head around it rather quickly now. A clever appointment, made far sooner than I expected.

In India, Brown was full of beans – boasting at one stage that he’d outlasted Dame Kelly Holmes who had to retire to her hotel. He should have saved his energy. He looked exhausted at PMQs today. Until Cameron piped up on Northern Rock, that was. Then he sprang to life and put up a hell of a fight. Much rests on whether Cameron can make Northern Rock stick. Brown is like a used car salesman – “he’s gone from Prudence to Del Boy without even touching the ground” (sure I’ve heard that before). “It’s a sub-prime deal from a sub-Prime minister”. Good. Ditto the line on liquidisation. But he didn’t get Brown on the ropes. Brown now has two strategies for Cameron at PMQs.

Have a look at the stock market today, then the housing market, and then ask what kind of idiot would try to flog a mortgage bank like Northern Rock right now? Brown and Darling are fast becoming the Del Boy and Rodney of British politics – churning out dodgy figures, mesmerised by their own little scams and then getting fleeced when they engage in the real market and try to do deals with real business people (remember that gold sale?). The truly terrifying thing is it’s our money – about £60bn of it - bundled in the back of their Robin Reliant as they head off to see a man about a dog and a bank. At 11.30am the FTSE100 is down a bloody 3.6% but there’s one exception. Northern Rock is up a gravity-defying 35%.