A bit of Mitchell and Terry.

Andrew Mitchell has probably never felt much like John Terry before, but he may be starting to. “I did not use the words attributed to me,” the Chief Whip has claimed, after casually disembarking from a Volkswagen Polo, shunning the usual ministerial motor in a clearly choreographed attempt at not being the sort of chap who says “plebs” to policemen.

In contrast, the former England captain has embraced the possibility that he’s burnt his bridges, and jumped. The Chelsea skipper has retired from international football on the eve of his FA hearing for alleged racist abuse, claiming the Football Association had made his position “untenable”. Having already been cleared in the law-courts, he perhaps feels there's no founding for further interference. The FA clearly do. If found guilty however, the club will likely cleave to their captain, as Liverpool over Suarez, and the spectre of racism will still follow football until purged from the peer group that supports it.

The robust ranting of Andrew Mitchell, sounding more like a character from Eastenders than a former UN peacekeeper, was reportedly in response to a police rebuke on his cycling habits. The officer was allegedly on the angry end of an aggressive appraisal of his social standing, liberally loaded with the industrial invective we might more expect in the Chelsea changing room. The police log quotes the use of “plebs”, “morons” and enough fornicatory phraseology to embarrass a rapper. The Prime Minister’s spokesman says there is no need for an investigation, or an exact explanation of what Anglo-Saxon was uttered, because Mr Mitchell has already apologised. And indeed he has, twice. Whilst denying the verbose vocabulary, he has publicly regretted his rudeness, and the stage-managed ‘sorry’ still seems odds-on to save his skin, but betting is not yet suspended.

Where I come from they taught us; “don’t sh*t on your doorstep.” For the future benefit of Mr Mitchell, that useful maxim should possibly stretch to any doorsteps with policemen standing on them.

Any 'Closer' will cost you.

As French privacy laws apparently prevent “any wilful violation of the private life”, the Prophet Mohammed might also wish they extended to those no longer living. Just as the jungle of journalists camped outside the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Nanterre were packing up their tents, in another part of Paris, the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was preparing to publish images depicting the prophet in “particularly explicit poses.” 

Relief was palpable on the faces of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge yesterday, as they enjoyed a convivial cavort with smiling locals on the island of Tuvalu, on the last leg of their tour to the Far East and South Pacific. The injunction granted to prevent further publication of topless shots of the Duchess by French Closer cannot erase the images from public consciousness, or computers, but can confirm that a line has been drawn over which the long of lens may only peer at their peril. Few in France frankly see the sense in penalising the publication of pictures already made public. However, a refusal to lunge at every legal avenue available would be teetering on a tacit acceptance of such an intrusion as an unavoidable side-effect of celebrity. With the spectre of the shameful shenanigans with which the paparazzi pestered Princess Diana no doubt present in their peripheral vision, the royal couple have drawn a necessary distinction. Whilst a pact persists between dodgy D-listers and less scrupulous snappers, in which dignity is a collateral casualty in their mutual pursuit of front page pictures, William and Kate are cut from classier cloth. They are a professional pairing, as ably displayed by the ease with which they worked the crowds on the Solomon Islands, barely betraying their understandable anguish as they grinned in grass skirts and sipped coconut cocktails. 

While the royal couple have been pressing the flesh in the Far East, and preventing its further exposure from the courtrooms of Paris, outrage at “Innocence of the Muslims” continues. The American made short film has ignited indignant protests across the Muslim world. Reuters report riot police deployed to control crowds marching on the US consulate in Karachi, with similar scenes duplicated in Jakarta, Kabul, and Beirut. After the US Ambassador to Libya was among four Americans killed amid violent protests in Benghazi, President Obama typically tip-toed the tightrope of Anglo-Arab diplomacy. Whilst condemning any attempt “to denigrate the religious beliefs of others”, he took pains to maintain that there could be “no justification for this type of senseless violence.”

The whole furore is more about freedom than film. The picture itself has all the accumulated poise and potency of a clumsy GCSE drama project. From a purely personal perspective, I’d be challenged to summon up any murderous zeal from such a laughable and pointless pantomime. Unless of course, I was very angry anyway.  

Bigot-Gate II

228,000 people have responded to the government consultation on same-sex marriage, and 50,000 to that regarding HS2, so from a population of 62,641,000, the overwhelming majority did not respond at all. It’s not that folk don’t care about spending £32.7 billion knocking 40 minutes off a trip to Birmingham, or if civil partnerships need a nudge in the nuptial direction, it’s just that most of us are rather busy.

Some however, may not be busy enough. Such was the clamour when Nick Clegg’s office released details of last night’s speech, in which opponents of the ‘equalities agenda’ were allegedly about to be branded as ‘bigots’, that the wording was withdrawn within an hour and a half. The Deputy PM said it was a mistake, just a rogue draft that slipped out, possibly under a door, and that bigot is “not the kind of word that I would use.” Ok, why not?

Bigotry is intolerance to others opinions, and referring to bigots is an opinion in itself. If we have reached the stage where it is not tolerated to discuss intolerance, then free speech is really only free for those who agree.

Clinking glasses to the coalition’s consultation on gay marriage, Mr Clegg was apparently due to declare that “continued trouble in the economy gives the bigots a stick to beat us with…” Hardly incendiary, even in a dry summer, and yet his aides duly dashed out a denial, such was the size of the stick they in turn were hit with. No-one was to be directly accused of bigotry, and neither has the Lib Dem leader been, he is merely guilty just of almost uttering the word. None-the-less, Conservative MP Peter Bone said he should really resign, to a chorus of others tut-tutting on Twitter. Whether you agree with same sex marriage or not, surely the reaction is ridiculous.  

Of course, the speed with which this semantic scandal was sanctioned owes much to the memory of Gordon Brown’s brush with one Mrs Duffy of Rochdale. The former PM famously failed to field her questions on the economy, or politely pick her up on her reference to “flocking Eastern Europeans” for that matter, before mumbling “bigoted woman” into the smouldering ashes of his election chances. 

It was Brown’s predecessor, Tony Blair, who championed the Civil Partnerships Act, affording same sex couples equal rights under law. In seeking to secure his own liberal legacy with same-sex marriages, David Cameron has no harder sell than to the barracking benches behind him. There may be ‘bigots’ abiding on both sides of the debate, but surely the strength of our democracy is in the tolerance of others opinions. In an ideal world, our collective task is to ensure that even attitudes from extreme ends of the spectrum have the right to a voice, but within that, taking individual responsibility, so that no voice disrupts the harmony of another. We don’t live in an ideal world of course, but that is not an excuse to stop trying to.

Cameron's refurbished cabinet.

If you took a spirit level to the Prime Minister’s shiny new cabinet, you might find it leaning to the right. Emerging refreshed from its first ministerial make-over, the foundations are familiar, but the new paintwork may look a darker hue of blue.

Incoming Environment Secretary Owen Paterson is an acknowledged eurosceptic, so expect enough battling with Brussels to satisfy even the most brazen backbencher. Chris Grayling is the robust replacement for Ken Clarke as Justice Minister, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer is perhaps a tad too combustible to leave wandering the chambers unchallenged, so becomes a ‘minister without portfolio’.  Sounding much like a poet without a pen, this roving brief may yet serve to support the current incumbent of No.11, depending on the length of his leash.

After recent healthcare reforms, one might struggle to find a less popular minister than the outgoing Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, except perhaps his replacement, Jeremy Hunt. A serial survivor, he has deftly emerged from accusations of ministerial code violations, and inappropriate proximity to press impresarios, briefly basked in the reflected glory of the London Olympics and promptly landed a promotion. Deserved reward or poisoned chalice? Maybe both.

The most controversial casualty of the cabinet cull could be Justine Greening. After just ten months as Transport Secretary, she’s clearing her desk, her thinly veiled frustration shared in typically magnified manner by Boris Johnson. As MP for Putney-on-flight-path, Ms Greening was obliged to oppose a third Heathrow runway, considered closer to the Boris Island brigade, advocates of an airport in the Thames estuary. The Mayor will naturally miss a well-placed proponent, and suggested the reshuffle showed a Downing Street thawing towards Heathrow expansion.

If that were the case, then Justine Greening was a curious choice to begin with, given the location of her constituency. A cynic might assert that at the time of her appointment then, the headlock from the airport lobby was notably looser. And so, against the backdrop of mumbled confirmations of manifesto commitments, an independent review into airport capacity has been birthed, and the new Transport Secretary will be Patrick McLoughlin, whose attitude to the Heathrow expansion appears agnostic. Conspiracy theorists may yet have cause to self-congratulate.