Shirley Not

Poor old Shirley Williams seems to be turning New Labour right after everyone, at least outside the Cabinet, has seen the error of such ways, if they ever succumbed to them.

On Question Time, she commended Tony Blair for his role in ending Gaddafi's never-existent nuclear weapons programme, and she peddled the old fantasy about Libya and Lockerbie as if it were an established fact, branding al-Megrahi an agent of Gaddafi on the basis of some gossip or other emerging out of the present chaos in Libya.

Still, she also quipped that an audience member sounded as if she wanted to abolish councillors. Her own party will very soon experience exactly what that would entail.