Simon carr independent biography of michael

The stature of our representatives is most obvious when measured against their responsibilities. Alan Johnson is more than equal to a post office box. Malcolm Wicks (Energy) compares very favourably with an Ever Ready battery. But the Ian Pearson twins are measured against India, China, World Trade and International Genocide. There is no scale relevant to the comparison.

The finance minister in China said earlier this year that the country had failed to meet its growth targets. "Our five-year strategy to keep growth beneath 8 per cent," he confessed, "has only made preliminary progress." Chinese growth is at 9 per cent, you see. It's a very different world out there, beyond Westminster.

The Tories don't seem to understand where they have come from, let alone where they're going. Michael Fabricant pointed out we had lost a million manufacturing jobs, prompting the furiously stupid response it always prompts, that a million such jobs were lost in Mrs T's first

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The Sketch: Why Blair will miss Michael Howard (unless Davis wins)

Next week is Michael Howard's gods Prime Minister's Question Time. Elegies all round. Ave atque vale. "Eheu fugaces postume, postume."

What will it help us that once we were strong? Experience tells us these last farewells are more comic than melancholic, so yesterday was Mr Howard's gods proper outing .

He chose to spend it "holding the government to account". It really was neither the time nor the place. What a waste of life it represented. "The days flee away and are lost to me, lost to me."

Courage! Let's face it in a manly way. It's not for much longer. Off he went, on the attack (always a mistake). He linked the shortage of flu vaccines with rising gas prices in order to show the Government imploding beneath its own incompetence.

Does it work for you? Keen as inom am to believe the worst of the Government, I funnen myself admiring Tony Blair's mastery of himself, the Opposition, the other opposition, the opposit

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The sketch: Simon Carr

An uncertainty principle works in these ballots for the leadership of the Conservative Party: the more you know, the less able you are to predict. Knowledge produces ignorance and omniscience produces total ignorance. It's not a paradox, it's just the condition of politics.

Look at these tactical voting strategies, a small selection of the best garnered over the day.

If you want Clarke to win you'd need him to be in the final with Portillo because the country would choose Iain Duncan Smith over Clarke, so you'd vote David Davis. To lock up the right-wing vote. Or pedestrian Clarke supporters, not bothering with anything more sophisticated, might naively vote for Portillo. Clearly, those who wanted Duncan Smith would have voted Ancram, so that Davis was knocked out and votes for Duncan Smith released. If you wanted Portillo, you'd vote Ancram; that at least needs no explanation. If you're David Davis, you vote Ken Clarke. (Young cardinals vote for old popes.