SOFT SPOKEN ALISTAIR DARLING, pictured above showing his old bag to the awaiting press on Budget Day yesterday, is the sort of dour Scot one suspects of having an ability to tell a joke without actually understanding the punch-line. Should this be the case, he fits perfectly into the tradition of Socialist and Labour Party politicians throughout the ages, many of whom have had Pict blood in their veins, in their ability to maintain thorough blankness of expression when all around are guffawing in the proverbial side-splitting manner.
YET WHILE THIS MIGHT BE ACCEPTABLE MORES at a party in Kensington and Chelsea, for example, it is surely not the done thing in the British parliament, where one expects jokes to be made with a smirk, if not with a wink and a twinkle. Otherwise it would be difficult for the Liberal Democrat MPs to know when to laugh. Then again, in the case of yesterday’s typically sneaky Scots budget, perhaps a smirk would be seen as adding insult to injury, putting Darling in the league of the last Scot Chancellor of the Exchequer, who only recently added insult to perjury over financing British troops.
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