It was a tough ask for anyone involved in the Eastleigh by-election to top Labour candidate John O’Farrell’s crass remark that he wished Margaret Thatcher had died in the Brighton bomb.
But Toby Perkins, the Labour MP who helped O’Farrell, came close. In a cack-handed tribute to by-election runners-up UKIP, rugby-playing Perkins said: ‘UKIP ran a chaotic, organic campaign but, like Al Qaeda, it was effective.’ Minus the suicide bombers, he forgot to add.
Thatcher joke: Ed Miliband visiting Eastleigh to meet John O' Farrell for the by-electionFor once, Boris Johnson did not use David Cameron’s by-election woes to rub his Tory rival’s nose in the dirt. Asked about the party’s defeat in Eastleigh, the London Mayor creased his blond brow and grunted: ‘Small earthquake in Chile, time to move on.’ Which may go down well with the PM, if less so with the small community of Chilean expatriates in Johnson’s London.
Claire and a case of crash for Questions
Don’t hold your breath for a repeat appearance by Amazonian Tory MP, and former aide to George Osborne, Claire Perry, left, on BBC1’s Question Time. Party officials said Perry’s hectoring, patronising performance on Thursday’s show was a ‘car crash’. Sitting next to clowning, bow-tied, UKIP-supporting ex-Tory Minister Neil Hamilton – disgraced in a ‘cash for questions’ scandal – Perry achieved the seemingly impossible task of making him look statesmanlike. ‘Every time Claire’s on the telly, we say cheerio to 10,000 votes,’ sighed one despairing Tory colleague.
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Rail Fares Minister Simon Burns, shamed by this newspaper into travelling to work by train from his home in Chelmsford, Essex – instead of using an £80,000-a-year, chauffeur-driven Government limo – claims he has worked out how to beat the rush-hour crush. He says he ‘bustles’ his way on. Wow. Reluctant commuter Burns is full of dazzling insights into the crumbling railways. ‘There are punctuality issues and investment is needed on the tracks and infrastructure.’ You don’t say! If only he had been kicked out of his limo a few years ago.
Nick's Uganda intrigue
Former Liberal leader David Steel used a Lords debate to poke fun at Nick Clegg over the sexual harassment claims against Lib Dem peer Chris Rennard. Sniggering Lord Steel said that when he and Clegg visited Africa recently, ‘a colleague suggested Nick and I should have some “Ugandan discussions” ’, referring to the infamous Private Eye euphemism for sex. ‘As though we don’t have problems enough,’ added Steel. A bit rich considering he became leader after predecessor Jeremy Thorpe was brought down in a gay sex scandal involving the shooting of a Great Dane.
While the storm raged over the sexual impropriety allegations, Rennard ran off to Armenia. He was on an all-expenses-paid jaunt – sorry, fact-finding trip – monitoring elections in the former Soviet republic, which has a ‘widespread and growing’ problem with corruption. Rennard’s verdict on voting there? ‘We could find no widespread basis for complaint.’ If only Clegg could say the same about him.
Away on a fact-finding mission: Lord Christopher Rennard