The Donkey Goes Chicken – 2

After the non-appearance of a Government pundit on last Thursday’s Question Time, it might have been thought that the keepers of the new and improved two-headed donkey would keep their heads down, and try not to put their feet in it quite so badly next time round. But that would be to underestimate the nature of the beast – and those keepers.

Because the grumbling from Donkey Central over Alastair Campbell’s presence on the programme has continued, with Evening Standard political editor Paul Waugh being given a seemingly exclusive insight from a “Downing Street source”. Quite why Waugh feels the need to use such coded terms is unclear, as any fule kno that his “source” is Young Dave’s resident secondee from the Murdoch “family”, Andy Coulson.

And Coulson is admitting a weakness in carrying on his misery-fest against the Beeb: he’s scared witless of Big Al. Moreover, unless Cameron is preparing to appease Rupe and his troops by moving against the Beeb, Coulson would do well to keep schtum and not make matters worse.

In any case, he may have bigger fish to fry before long: the ferreting about in the debris of Phonehackgate by Guardian man Nick Davies has not stopped, and Coulson will know that anything implicating him in the routinely criminal behaviour of those in and around the Screws means that he would be finished. Young Dave would have to dispense with his services, and Rupe wouldn’t have him back.

There just aren’t the career openings for former donkey mucker-outers nowadays.