Whoever’s orchestrating the campaign against Iain Duncan Smith should plainly be the Conservative Party’s spin doctor. To blow up an unproved matter of paying your wife money for nothing into something akin to The Hutton Inquiry is a masterpiece. Not one I agree with, however – it’s not a bundle of fun watching a man who’s only fault is to have more morals than most of the other politicians being torn apart. He’s mounting a staunch defence (see this article, and this video, from ITV); one that suggests he knows this is the time to do or die.
While most political observers can smell the cynical stench of “death by media”, his critics can really smell the blood and are royally shafting him from all sides. They say he can’t possibly call the offenders into line, because he stepped out of line under the Major government. So a political leader’s only hope of being strict with his peers is to be a drone as a backbencher? They say that if he doesn’t buck up the Tories in the opinion polls, he’ll have to go. But what chance does he have, when at the first sign of recovery (the Tories lead by 5 points, says the BBC), they bundle in to ruin his name, his wife, his reputation and possibly the entire party? Labour-leaning Mirror journalists couldn’t have done a better hatchet job. I suppose they all think they are better leaders. Maybe they are in their own opinion, but they are just as unproven a leader as Arnold Schwarzeneggar, and they certainly wouldn’t be as well-equipped for a swift bout down the dark alleys of Westminster.
Duncan Smith, defending his family, has been finally provoked into being the kind of tough leader the Tories wanted 2 years ago; it may be that the moral-free plotters have finally pulled the flokati rug from under his feet.

Public Whip – Counting votes on your behalf – keep track of those pesky MPs.

Poor, misguided Americans:Tony Blair for President, and, can you believe, Thank You Tony.
Makes you want to weep… (partially ripped from bloggerheads)

Kellywatch: The excellent HangingDay comes up with two salient points over the last couple of days: firstly that Andrew McKinley, the reviled Labour MP who publicly and brusquely “interrogated” David Kelly before his death, is actually rather a good egg. Look at HangingDay’s account of McKinley’s appearance at the Hutton Inquiry – he comes across remarkably well, a very underreported fact of today’s papers.
And the second, VERY well-noticed point, centres on the former MI6 chief’s rather too staunch defence of Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell – as the Telegraph said, you could “almost hear the sound of ranks being closed”. In his veiled attack of the BBC, Scarlett disputed Andrew Gilligan’s assertions, and managed to reveal that there were actually no missiles in Iraq at all. Read it all here.
Oooh, I feel very political today…

Kellywatch: I’m still plumping for a conspiracy on this one. And so are the people over at OfficialSpin (here’s their article on it). The Independent reveals the lengths to which Dr Kelly was gagged, and the autopsy results STILL haven’t been released, over a full month after the event…

Hanging Day have decided the the recent episode of the Simpsons has a faint ring of David Kelly about it.

Well, how about that. Thanks to a sterling campaign by Tim over at Bloggerheads, you can now email the Prime Minister Tony Blair. Ask him why David Kelly’s autopsy results haven’t been published. Go on.

You’ll remember my rants about the ongoing Kelly saga, now being played out in the Hutton Inquiry. If you read the Sun or The Times, you’ll think the Government has the upper hand, and if you read the Mail or the Telegraph, you’ll think the BBC have it done and dusted. The Guardian, of all people, have written an interesting piece on the biased coverage, and wonders whether anyone in the media is covering it objectively.

Kelly Watch: If anyone thought the anti-BBC slant to the papers over the last couple of days was merely the papers backing up public opinion, think again.
“It is understood, ” says the Telegraph, “that on Saturday afternoon political journalists on the News of the World … had been preparing to write a critical piece on the Government.
That afternoon they were suddenly informed that the opposite was now required.”
Many of the papers reported menacing phonecalls from Number 10 over the weekend. And what links all the papers that tore the BBC apart over the weekend? Rupert Murdoch owns them – a man who desparately wants the government to let him buy Channel 5. The Guardian tells all.

A lot of conjecture tonight on the David Kelly debacle. My theory’s gaining ground – check out these two threads (one, two) on metafilter, a big discussion forum. If you read those, you’ll note a key fact I discovered – that every time Dr Kelly’s story is mentioned on the television, the BBC use the term “apparent suicide”. Look at the BBC News website too – they say he was “found dead”, and that he “died from a slit wrist”. In fact i’ve just searched the site for “kelly suicide”, and not once does it use the single word “suicide” – “apparent suicide”, yes, and “bled to death”… Very non-committal, and no mention of suicide at all. But it’s been confirmed, hasn’t it? Or do they know something we don’t…
But anyway, avanti, enough. Let everyone else tussle with it. I’m off to find some exceedingly silly links for you all.