On a wing and a prayer

It is not often that I agree with Simon Heffer but his piece in this morning's Telegraph is spot on.

there has been a consistent, unanimous message about the political class from people who work in business: that nobody senior in any party understands just how bad things are

And even the Tories come in for stick or should I say George Osborne

Mr Osborne is set to become Chancellor of the Exchequer not because he is a great economic thinker or strategist, and not even because he understands economics, but because he is Mr Cameron's chum. There are several people on the Conservative benches infinitely better qualified to do the job, and infinitely more needed by the country at this time of severe crisis: but they don't have a prayer.

Heffer may be right but let's not turn this into party politics

Simon Heffer is bound to stir up some controversy with his piece in this morning's Telegraph that refutes the fact that Northern Ireland has ever been at peace.

Whether you agree with him or not what makes this worse is his turning it into a party political argument

In its spin-driven pursuit of triumph, Labour pronounced the problem of Northern Ireland as dealt with. It was lulled into this by an IRA "permanent" ceasefire: not realising, or not wanting to realise, that a ceasefire was only as "permanent" as the criminals in the IRA who so graciously decreed it.

Simon Heffer v Charlemagne

The Economist's Charlemagne goes on the offensive for those who see the current economic crisis as the death of the European single market.

Notably the Telegraph's Simon Heffer whose piece It's the Europhiles versus reality, and reality is going to win is taken to task.

His piece writes the magazine's European commentator

is the latest in a line of British newspaper articles glorying in the imminent collapse of the euro.

and concludes that

The events he predicts would, of course, plunge tens or hundreds of millions of people into economic misery. Some might not chortle at that. But then they do not write for the British daily press.

Surely not a socialist plot

As usual Simon Heffer doesn't mince his words this morning in the Telegraph.

After a week which has seen the speaker under pressure over the Green arrest and then passing the buck to his Sergeant in arms and the leader of the Commons being asked five times to give him a vote of confidence,Heffer believes that it all comes down to the speaker's shunning of tradition

This is what Mr Heffer has to say

his conduct in the past 10 days since the police raided Damian Green's office has been disgusting even by his standards. In an age when people are cynical in the extreme about politicians, he has shown us there is still plenty more scope to be appalled by them

adding that

The important point about Mr Martin is that, first, he broke with tradition by giving someone plainly agreeable to him the post of Serjeant-at-Arms; and, second, that when something that should have been his responsibility went horribly wrong, he chose in the most undignified fashion to blame her.

Furthermore it is all Labour's fault in abandoning the traditions of the House

there is a deeper problem. It is Labour's (and I include Mr Martin in that group) lack of regard for history, and for the liberties hard-won throughout the past few hundred years.