A crazy week in politics – don’t mention the war

NOW then, now then, now then. If I had predicted a couple of weeks ago that Jimmy Savile would be back at the top of the political agenda, you’d rightly think I’d finally taken leave of my senses.

The awkward phone call from the editor would have gone something like: ‘It’s your column, old boy, but . . .’ He might have suggested a brief spell drying out in the Priory clinic, as a basis for negotiation.

Flights of fancy are one thing, but disinterring a notorious paedophile for comic effect while the country is coming apart at the seams would not only be in the worst possible taste, it would be the act of a madman.

As it turns out, I missed a trick. Had I written a spoof column featuring the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition tearing lumps out of each other over Savile, I’d have been bang on the money.

Mystic Rich strikes again. Sadly, I failed to see this one coming. With his back against the wall over the Downing Street parties, Boris lobbed a googly at Keir Starmer, accusing him of failing to charge Savile when he was Director of Public Prosecutions.

Quite what that’s got to do with the price of prosecco is anyone’s guess. But Starmer lost it completely. When Johnson refused to withdraw the allegation during PMQs on Wednesday, the Labour leader went tonto.

He launched into a bizarre rant: ‘Theirs is the party of Winston

Churchill. Our parties stood together as we defeated fascism in Europe. Now their leader stands in the House of Commons parroting the conspiracy theories of violent fascists to try to score cheap political points. He knows exactly what he is doing. It is time to restore some dignity.’ Nurse! For a moment I thought he was going to start goose-stepping in the aisle, like John Cleese in Fawlty Towers. Don’t mention the war!

TALK about over-reaction. After all, in 2013 Starmer had issued a public apology for his department’s failure to nail Savile. We’ll never know exactly what happened because the case files have been conveniently shredded.

Yes, Starmer himself was cleared of any personal involvement by a panel of top QCs. (Quelle surprise.) That doesn’t absolve him of overall responsibility. Goodness knows what possessed him to drag Winston Churchill into it. But Starmer’s risible hysteria was merely symptomatic of the madness which has consumed Westminster lately.

As I wrote recently, the Bubble is in Rollerball mode right now, like a pack of hyper-active preschoolers chasing a football round a playground. Social media and the 24-hour news channels are in overdrive, obsessed to the point of insanity. All perspective has been lost.

We must expect the Opposition to exploit the Prime Minister’s self-inflicted predicament. But the glee with which Tory MPs are piling in is, frankly, nauseating.

Yes, it’s all about trust and has been handled appallingly. Ultimately, though, we’re talking after-hours booze and birthday cake here, not the start of World War III.

Events on the Ukrainian border may not be the Cuban Missile Crisis, either, but they are deadly serious nonetheless. The West must maintain a united front in the face of Russian aggression.

Yet when the Prime Minister was in Ukraine to discuss the emergency earlier this week, his backbenchers were doing their utmost to undermine him back home.

So while Putin puts 130,000 troops on a war footing, Conservative MPs are attempting to topple the democratically elected leader of NATO’s second biggest military force. They should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Their self-absorption defies belief.

Even as the RAF was forced to scramble Typhoons for the second day running to intercept Russian bombers probing our defences, Tory MPs were submitting letters of no confidence in Johnson. While the cat’s away, the rats will play.

Yesterday one of Boris’s longestserving aides flounced out over his Savile jibe. Oh, for heaven’s sake. Then last night, it emerged his Chief of Staff, Chief PR man and Principal Private Secretary are all leaving amid fevered talk about a Dishi Rishi coup. No 10 is falling apart. Is it any wonder that foreign leaders are sneering openly at Britain? This is no way for a serious party of government to behave. Still, if Starmer aspires one day to become Prime Minister, he should start acting like one.

Instead he’s indulging in puerile student union politics, banging on about ‘violent fascists’ and directing unoriginal and rehearsed insults about Thelma and Louise at the PM.

At least Boris’s Dastardly and Muttley riposte sounded spontaneous and managed to raise a laugh.

As I said, it’s about trust. That cuts all ways. Right now, lawyer or no lawyer, I wouldn’t trust Starmer to do a little light conveyancing.

The unedifying schoolyard squabbles in the Commons do no one any favours. That includes the Leader of the Opposition.

He cites Churchill. But if Starmer had been Labour leader in 1943, he’d have demanded a police inquiry into the Prime Minister having a champagne-and-Full English breakfast in bed while the rest of the country was suffering food and drink shortages.

To quote his own words back at him: ‘It’s time to restore some dignity.’

And I’m sure he doesn’t need me to remind him: Jimmy Savile remains dead.