Mud-wrestling for beginners

Fraser Nelson's response on election night at the very the moment cooperation with the LDs to ensure the end of the Labour government was raised was, 'It is unacceptable. I shall oppose it.'

This was the tenor of his Spectator editorial just before the election. Mr Nelson is a principled man which is wholly admirable but thank God he is not involved in setting up this country's next government. The practice of politics is about government. All else is commentary. In a moment like this, with unprecedented enemies marching towards us in the shape of the international money-lenders and with Whelan/Dromey/Balls/Harman openly threateing to 'unleash hell' on a democratically elected government because they are not it, the only objective is to despatch the enemy before he has time to regain consciousness and strike you down with a fatal blow, and to wrest the keys to the kingdom from his cold dead hands. All other considerations must wait.

High-minded Whigs and Tories, their delicate hands thrown up in horror at the noisome vapours which have suddenly polluted their rose-scented salons, must disregard their delicate sensibilities. The inconsequential luxury of theoretical debate and the civilised editorial conference must now wait upon the mud-wrestler and the bloodstained gladiator.

Nothing must prevent the dismissal from government of the Labour Party and the formation of a government which agrees on how it will deal with the nations's enemies.

This is the clear will of the people. The only question now is how. While those in a position to do so work that out, the rest of us must bite our lips and wish them luck.

Once Labour is mortally wounded and banished we can get back to drinking tea out of our porcelain cups and rowing about wallpaper. At least, in the interludes between bouts of street mayhem which our political enemies have promised us.

Meanwhile, crocodiles like Balls, Mandelson and Brown are watching proceedings and hoping the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats will tear each other apart so that they can devour the remains and take power in the ensuing vacuum. That must not - must not - happen.