Iain Dale: Pretending He Thinks Osborne is Brilliant

The Conservative's weakest Treasury shadow or Chancellor of the last fifty years continues to get a bad press and the Labour Party's favourite Tory blogger Iain Dale is of course there to protest too much.

Complaining about standards. "Fiction posing as journalism" he squeals. Insufficient or inappropriate quotes. Unidentified sources. Trouble with non sequitors. Crass stupidity. Well, stuff like that anyway.

You'd have thought that Iain would realise that these Journo Grrrls - if you notice it is almost always the Grrrls he complains about - are actually following his own modus operandi. Imitation, flattery, schmattery.

GOO is not having a good crisis by any objective criteria. He doesn't say much and what he says is compromised by his "telling on Oleg" travails. When he does speak also generally speaking rubbish, or treasonous rubbish, and often rubbish that contradicts the Cameron lines too.

It is hard to know how Iain can say any different. GOO is being kept out of sight rather. Me old schooly Grayling has been doing twenty times as much media as GOO. Which I rather like. Because CG has lost his reasonable man with a smile and a wave posture and he's become a pretty whiney, scowly curmudgeon.

Bless him, GOO is rather like a cricketer of modest abilities being hidden in the field. Making everyone else work that much harder.

Can't run for toffee. Has butter fudge fingers. Cheesy thrower. Liable to collide with colleagues. Bloody useless really. Almost up to my own cricketing standards. Though I was never on a losing 1st XI side at Uni. He's not being kept in the team for his batting or bowling now is he? He's an all rounder. All round useless.

It is Cameron now who is looking indecisive and weak. Caroline Spelman is still in post. Oily Duncan is clearly a cackling loon in the pocket of the oil industry. This one is in the pocket of the Housebuilders. That one is backed by hedgies. Yet another is a developer. And none of them will stop their shenanigans.

It has taken a demand for £500,000 to be repaid by Den Dover to Europe to see him getting any disciplining. What about Chichester and all the others?

Cameron cannot or will not shift Osborne. Grayling is now grating. Davis was utterly mismanaged and remains a ticking time bomb. Hague is vaguely part time. Grieve is grief. Fox is faux. Lansley is scum.

The opposition front bench frankly looks lightweight, seriously compromised by outside interests and time consuming jobs or businesses, as well as looking inexperienced.

Iain Dale is Labour's favourite Tory blogging precisely because he comes out with stuff like this. Let the Tories keep Osborne where he is I say.

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UPDATE Sun 10:54: Andrew Rawnsley thinks GOO is actually being smart. Plotting for an election in 18 months.

Would be terrible to see the embarrassingly posh twat (right with bessie mate Nat Rothschild) lose that supposed gamble and come a cropper in seven or eleven months time. Osborne is being protected by cameron at the moment. Hidden in the field as it were.

GUFDATE Sun 11:06: Guido agrees.