Clare Short Resigns The Labour Whip!

Wow! What an incredible non-story for a Friday afternoon! I think I speak for everyone when I say "oh".

Clare has many political flaws, not least because she is a hysterical moron who wouldn't understand pragmatism if it came up and bit her on her not insubstantial arse. Listening to Clare has always left me with the feeling that whilst deafness would be terrible, it would at least have some sort of upside in that I would never have to listen to the whining of this terrible frog woman again. I am hard pressed to say which would be more irritating - a brief sentence from Clare or two hours of listening to that mechanical voice on dustbin lorries saying "warning, this vehicle is reversing" in the small hours of the morning when I am trying to sleep.

But Clare's biggest flaw as a politician is her complete inability to time anything correctly. She resigned over the Iraq war after it had started. She has resigned the Labour Whip weeks after announcing her intention to stand down as a Labour MP. Her former party would be well within their rights to shrug their shoulders and say "and?" about this news. Whilst I think the post of International Development Secretary is a bit like a wooden spoon prize in the Cabinet, it is probably not a bad achievement for someone as pigheaded and politically retarded as Clare. But Clare, in her oh, so finite wisdom, managed to take the minimal amount of influence that she had clawed for herself and spunked it all up against the wall. Had she wanted to be a figure of historical interest then she should have resigned from the Cabinet and the Labour Party at the same time, prior to the start of the Iraq Invasion. Given what she did and when she did it, she is at best a historial irrelevance, and at worst the butt of future political jokes. It is a real challenge for a well known party rebel who is standing down at the next election to make themselves less relevant to their party. But by resigning the Labour Whip Short has managed just that. You can almost imagine Jacqui Smith, Labour's Chief Whip, raising a toast to her staff, and commenting "well, thank fuck we don't have to worry about that old trout anymore".

BBC News has a very interesting photo of Miss Short:

Doesn't she look like a demented bag lady who has been forced into a hideous jacket to try and make it through some sort of panel to be released back into the community? And her facial expression - it looks like she has sat, without realising it, on a broom handle and has found she quite like the sensation of having a big stick up her arse.

Bye bye, Clare. You have managed to beat a well deserved path to future obscurity. Which, given your inability to say anything worth hearing during your 23 years in parliament, should suit you very, very well.