Powell Lite

I raised a few hackles among readers of this blog a few weeks' back for daring to criticise Boris Johnson, so I was interested to read about the report by Compass on why the former Spectator editor is unfit to be Mayor of London.

Frankly, I think the Brownite think-tank was being a bit po-faced by quoting Boris's comments on driving a Ferrari against him - "the whole county of Hampshire was lying back and opening her well-bred legs to be ravished by the Italian stallion".

It may be tasteless, but most readers would probably take this comment in the light-hearted spirit in which it was meant. Racism, though, is a different matter - especially in a city as multiracial as London.

In its report, Compass described Johnson as "a type of Norman Tebbit in a clown's uniform." Perhaps a better comparison, though, would have been with Enoch Powell.

The Compass dossier, which delved back into Johnson's journalistic career as well as his more recent political utterances, reminds us that Johnson once wrote a piece in which he referred to black people as "piccaninnies with watermelon smiles."

The phrase "wide-grinning piccaninnies" was of course used by Powell in the notorious Rivers of Blood speech in 1968 which effectively ended his career in frontline politics. As such it is a word which all aspiring Tory politicians should surely avoid.

Poor Frances Lawrence

I am coming very late in the day to this, I know, but having followed the original case quite closely back in 1995 I couldn't let the Learco Chindamo controversy pass without comment.

I don't care how much of a reformed character Chindamo has become - and as a Christian I'm a firm believer in the possibility of redemption - but the bottom line of all this is that Mrs Lawrence should not be expected to live with the thought that her husband's killer is somewhere "out there." If he could not be locked up for life as his appalling crime surely merited, then let him at least be sent somewhere a long way away from the people whose lives he has ruined.

Inheritance Tax: Tory gain

The reaction from the opposition has been predictable, but I'm afraid the Tories are right about this one. Inheritance Tax should go, or at least be radically reformed, not necessarily for all the reasons John Redwood says it should but because, thanks to the phenomenon of fiscal drag, it has basically become a regressive tax that penalises people who by no stretch of the imagination can be considered rich.

I would be amazed if David Cameron does not put today's proposal straight in the Tory election manifesto, but it makes such obvious political sense that I would also be mildly surprised if some form of it does not also end up being purloined by Labour.

At the very least, ministers ought to consider some of the alternative options to outright abolition, such as exempting the main family home from the tax, or levying it at 20p rather than 40pc, or raising the threshold to £1m, so that it reverted to its original purpose as a tax only on the very wealthy.

Chancellor Alistair Darling today said the Government was "keeping the situation under review." Expect that review to have been completed well before the next General Election.

Hardly a ringing endorsement

The polls on this blog are not meant to be taken especially seriously - they are really there just to provide a bit of a talking point and to give users another way of interacting besides leaving comments. But the result of my recent survey on who should lead the Lib Dems into the next election makes interesting reading in my view.

The full result was as follows:

Sir Menzies Campbell 28%
Nick Clegg 22%
Charles Kennedy 21%
Chris Huhne 15%
None of these 11%

Given that a fair few of my readers are Tory and Labour supporters who might have voted for Sir Ming in the belief that a new Lib Dem leader might generate a recovery in the party's fortunes at their own parties' expense, this hardly constitutes a ringing endorsement. Neither does it demonstrate any clear consensus on who might replace Ming, with almost as many favouring a return to Charles Kennedy as backing leader-in-waiting Nick Clegg.

Still on the subject of the next election, a new poll is now running on when you think it will be held, within the available legal timeframe of autumn 2007 - spring 2010.