LIKE Ferrets in a sack, popcorn a-poppin and a cauldron bubbling, the House of Commons is alive. It's jumping!
Why? Because there's a recession that requires the greatest diligence and attention from those august members who helped stoke its fires? Come off it. Because arch-Machiavellian Mandelson is back, causing a labyrinth of plots and Byzantine traps to b
eware? Possibly, but he's better at cock-up than conspiracy. Because their Gorbals Guv'nor has let the local rozzers into the sanctity of the Members' private room? The only parliamentary privilege they'll protect is their pension.
No, it's because there's a real chance we might be facing a summer general election – and this week's Queen's Speech had everyone ablaze, speculating and considering their holidays.
Wednesday's Queen's Speech Lite was the final opportunity for a full parliamentary year's legislation – so normally it's brimming over with every last idea that a government wants to impose on us, fearful that it won't ever get another chance – or will run out of time.
There are essentially three reasons why this week's speech could be such thin gruel.
The first is that the government of the day is supremely confident of a forthcoming electoral success and can take for granted that it shall be given another five years to impose its will upon us. Whatever you think of Labour's chances, supreme confidence cannot describe anyone's posture. The Tories have been ahead in the polls for a year now – and usually by some handsome margins. Sure, their lead has narrowed recently but the Chancellor's recent spending splurge appears to have been rumbled by the electorate already. Optimism might be fanciful, but confidence would be catastrophic.
The second possibility is that Brown's Government has completely run out of ideas. With Tony Blair as premier, this could never be said. He was up for anything – anything that could be presented as modernisation, reform or a new broom to any fusty old tradition. Never mind if some such time-served anachronisms had proven to work better than too-clever-by-half Islington dinner party musings. "If it ain't broke, we'll fix it!" would be an apt motto for the Blair regime. But Gordon Brown, out of ideas? It is a possibility, for he's such a control freak that he is apt to think up an idea one minute and talk himself out of it a week later. Think of that early October election last year and you will see what I mean. In many respects Gordon Brown is his own worst enemy and will probably write the screenplay for his final Act. Exit, stage left.
The third explanation is the one that's getting everyone talking in the Parliament's smoke-free bars – a June election. Clear the decks of troublesome legislation that upsets backbenchers or, even worse, the public. The theory goes that Gordon Brown has been reinvigorated, that he is on his game and that the public will trust him more than the white-socked upstart David Cameron. I don't hold to this theory as I think that the public's tired of Labour and will turn to anyone that doesn't have two heads – or even the right person with two heads – just for a change. David Cameron may have no head or two, but I think he should still be the favourite to win even an early General Election.
There's also the difficulty that for Brown to look any good he needs to maintain the sense of crisis, not cure it.
Of course, it makes sense to go to the country before the recession really bites hard and the blame game seeks a sacrifice (and who better than the High Priest of Boom and Bust?). So June cannot be ruled out. Still, I suspect that thanks to Brown's hubris, his conceit that he can manage us out of this mother of all recessions, he will want to wait until June 2010 in the confident belief he can turn to us and bellow: "I said I would fix it."
That would be his preferred scenario, but life's never that easy. Like some King's Christmas panto, I still expect the audience to yell back: "Oh no you haven't." Exit, trap door.
Spoonful of sugarMore good news in the shape of the latest fall of one per cent in the Bank of England interest rates – unless you're a saver. Meanwhile, the Government is going around bailing out the banks whose excess it failed to regulate, and now underwriting mortgage holders who over-extended themselves despite the regular warnings in the media that we were hurtling towards a crash.
Yet again we are confronted with the Government encouraging rent seeking – bad economic behaviour to you and me – by offering perverse incentives to people and institutions to go out and do all the wrong things again because this time it will be pain free. It's a politician's thing; it's called sweetening the pill or sugaring the medicine. Don't be fooled, Gordon Brown ain't no Mary Poppins – although Alistair Darling would make a good chim-chimney sweep.
