A Gloss on the Play of State. I recall intending to write about poetry, politics and the war on terror. Here's politics; well, a soupcon of economics, and then politics.

How things are: A leftish Government in the UK that's been in power for seven years, spent a lot of money, raised a lot of taxes through National Insurance and indirect taxation, and raided pensions to fund its raises in public spending- but kept unemployment down and maintained low inflation combined with growth. In other words, the 'headline' figures that Thatcher's Tories introduced like wet concrete in the public mind during the 1980's have firmed up and been used by Chancellor Gordon Brown most skilfully to push his socialistic agenda. All the many socialists-at-heart meanwhile play their usual game and moan about how right-wing the Government is- and the key point almost goes unnoticed. They're the governors.

So, in the light of these things, knowing that change is continuous and comparatively rarely merited, whatever clever noises politicians make to say that the only changes being made are necessary ones (and that, dear possible reader, is the genius of Tony Blair in a blinding nutshell), I am led to think about the condition of the dear old Tories. All this is leading where I need to defer to Melanie Phillips again, but I've been thinking along her lines on so many issues recently. The Tories were opportunistic over Hutton, lukewarm on Iraq, fiscally timid, and wrong in their treatment of their previous leader, IDS, who had much to teach them although would never have won them an election (that last point is so overwhelmingly the popular opinion that even in this quiet echo chamber of the web I shall not attempt to overturn it- for now). Well, Mel, I think, rips the balls off the Tory attack dog in this diary entry ce soir.