Steerpike

After Michael Fallon suggested that the Conservative party could campaign for the UK to leave the EU if a renegotiation proved unsuccessful, the Prime Minister's official spokesman was today asked about David Cameron's view on this. He said: 'The position hasn't changed. The Prime Minister is confident of success.' The Prime Minister's position is that he will definitely get the changes he wants and therefore he knows already that he will campaign to stay in the European Union in 2017. So the possibility that the party might have to campaign to stay out is being read in some quarters as a suggestion that Fallon and other ministers don't share his confidence and don't think he'll get the renegotiation result he wants.

At first glance Mr S thought that he might be watching Labour’s latest class-war party election broadcast: rich kids at Oxford University trashing restaurants, tussling with the law and generally playing silly buggers in evening wear. Sound familiar? This is, however, the trailer for The Riot Club: the silver screen’s answer to ‘the Buller’, which will bear little or no resemblance to the drinking society beloved by Boris, Dave and George during their time at the university. Labour bods will be rubbing their hands with glee at the timing of the film’s release.

In further proof that the devil makes work for idle thumbs, Labour MP Austin Mitchell described Pfizer as ‘rapists’ in a tweet. All hell has since broken loose. All of which leaves Mr S nonplussed. Definitions of the noun ‘rape’ are as follows: 1. the unlawful compelling of a person through physical force or duress to have sexual intercourse. 2. any act of sexual intercourse that is forced upon a person. 3. statutory rape. 4. an act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation. Mr S is confident that Mitchell was using the word ‘rapists’ in the sense of the fourth definition – an act of plunder, despoliation and violation.

There has been plenty of progressive backslapping this morning because Britain was one of the many countries to award the full 12 points to the bearded Austrian drag act Conchita Wurst in Saturday night’s Eurovision Song Contest. We showed those bigots over in Eastern Europe and Russia a thing or two, the chatterati say. Mr S hates to be a party-pooper, but he has news for you. The British public actually voted for some Polish girls in milkmaid outfits, seductively churning butter and cleaning clothes. The Polish ladies were very self-confident, if a little old fashioned: ‘We’re Slavic girls We know how to use our charming beauty Now, shake what your mama gave ya!’ The blushes of our progressive elite were spared by the suspiciously complex voting system.

Mr S would like to share this video with readers. It is the latest campaign ad from the Labour Party. As spoofs go, it’s leaden: puerile personal attacks mixed with divisive class war. It says nothing positive about Labour; it’s aimed squarely at people who would vote Labour in any circumstances. All in all, it’s not very clever, which is strange because Ed Miliband has spent much of the week professing that he has ‘more intellectual self-confidence’ than David Cameron. Labour staffers are certainly a little nonplussed. One party dogsbody lamented to Mr S: ‘How have we got from “I’m cleverer to that video in just 24 hours? It doesn’t add up.’ Indeed. Ed apparently has Thomas Piketty on speed dial.