Don't panic

The Conservative Party is this weekend indulging in a collective Corporal Jones moment suggesting they're far further from being ready for an election when it happens than they'd have the world believe.

The upside of this is the spectacularly entertaining sight of a group of the suited and booted, rather attached to the idea of running your life, my life and every other bugger's life as they are being wholly incapable of running their own lives. Oh, dear.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne's reaction included "Candidates of any party - Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat - have to exercise great caution in the language they use about immigration." but not "and the man's opinions are such as I cannot agree with.

And shadow home secretary David Davis described the comments as "very unwise" and advised that the constituency party should "think very hard" about how they expected their candidate to behave. But not that he disagrees with the views expressed by the would-be candidate. And he's added: "You cannot just stumble around throwing out comments which are insensitive or inflammatory," which is a bit rich coming from Davis.

So much for the Tory Party being a broad church. So much for the Tory Party having room for weirdos and racists. Perhaps next they'll slinging out the misogynists.