Testing Times

How shall we mourn Ahmad Chalabi? Suggestions below the line, please.

Notice how this demise is hardly being mentioned, considering how very significant a figure the dearly departed was in You Know What. It will be interesting to read the obituaries. If there are any.

Syria joins foxhunting and the Human Rights Act on the list of matters that David Cameron dare not put to the House of Commons at all. Ed Miliband delivered a defeat on the subject, but Jeremy Corbyn has forced a complete surrender.

Although not nearly sufficiently, the Trade Union Bill has been significantly modified today; it may still never pass one or other House, though.

What will Theresa May have to say for herself tomorrow? And what will come after that statement?

For all its triumphalism, this Government has a majority only half that of John Major. And the EU is still there, just as it was then.

George Osborne has been packed off to Germany to "demand" a veto power that we already have, and to set out five impossible tests for renegotiation.

Being impossible, Gordon Brown's five impossible tests for joining the euro meant that we never joined the euro. Jolly good.

Being impossible, George Osborne's five impossible tests for renegotiation will mean that there will be no renegotiation.

And no renegotiation will mean no referendum, because there will be nothing on which to have a referendum.

The two options are supposed to be the renegotiated terms, and withdrawal. With no first option, there will be no second option. No promise will have been broken.

All that, despite the fact that the campaign for withdrawal is very much up and running.

Funded by John Mills, at least pending a huge influx of union money in opposition to Cameron's renegotiated terms, to which Mills would be no less opposed.

And led by Kate Hoey, at least pending the decision of Jeremy Corbyn to oppose Cameron's renegotiated terms, to which Hoey would be no less opposed.

It is already in full swing, It has been for months. In opposition to austerity and to TTIP, since those are the issues.

But thanks to Osborne's five impossible tests, those issues may never be confronted at the ballot box. That is why he has set them.