Where would party conferences be without Monty Python? As if observing a grand historic tradition, David Cameron opened his speech on Wednesday – the first to be made at such a gathering by a Tory Prime Minister in 14 years – with a dead parrot gag (“They said we had ceased to be. That we were an ex-party. But it turns out we really were actually only resting.”) I asked one Cabinet minister whether he had expected quite such a furore over the child benefit proposals. “Well, I certainly didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition,” he replied. And, to be fair, as the red-robed Michael Palin warned us in the original sketch, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
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