Regulatory reform Mk. 2

There is something properly odd about this attempt to re-introduce what only two years ago was rapidly identified as a profoundly and dangerously illiberal measure and thrown out by even as supine a body as the Commons. So much so that it suggests the work of someone either terminally stupid or suffering from a kind of electoral death wish.

If it didn't get through two years ago when NuLab still had a healthy lead in the polls, how does Gordo imagine he get away with it now with the Conservatives as much as 16 points ahead and his own ratings heading towards single figures?

Attempting to sneak this act through will only further confirm the widespread and already perhaps fatally damaging view of him as inherently untrustworthy, inherently dishonest and strategically cack-handed. Further, more damagingly still, it must raise the question of whether his sense of 'entitlement' is not coming perilously close to active derangement. Could he, seriously, be already entertaining the possibility that the 'national interest' will demand the cancellation of the next election, something this act would allow him to ordain?

He is clearly either desperate – or mad.

My vote is firmly on the latter.