Parliament of Fowls

Not surprisingly, while getting rid of errant backbenchers and grandees, Vulpes Vulpes has only said that his own £22k dip into the public purse was within the rules. (I don't normally link to the Daily Fail or the Fail on Sunday, but surprisingly enough none of the broadsheets seem to want to touch this...yet.) So was the duck island, but Viggers had to go. The problem with this is first the absurdity of some of the claims, second the sheer amount of some of them (this fits into the second, less amusing category - playing with big stakes here) and thirdly that they ever were within the rules. Cameron is now properly tainted by this regardless of whether rules were followed. After all, Margaret Moran's claims were within the rules, as were many of Julie Kirkbrides'. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Short spread for this - the first barbeque of the season is about to get under way.

Situation with DC's mortgage - X Cups

The perfect solution. I feel this has more to do with the mortgage itself than with the actual issue of it making it into print. It solved problems for DC at the time and enabled the purchase of a house perhaps beyond what he could reasonably afford at the time, and thus balanced his need for grandeur with the reality of being a backbench Tory MP. He is worth £3m and his wife must be worth a lot as well - but this was funded through the public purse. Difficult questions arising from a happy and promising situation for him which were not anticipated at the time.

Question - Queen of Wands

The question now is reaction to it and how people will think of him further. He has been superficially strong during this scandal, making the right moves at the right time, but Conservative commentators such as Simon Heffer and Peter Oborne (in yesterday's Mail) take issue with what he has done than with what he has said. Heffer dismissed his pronouncements on government by SMS as fatuous. Peter Oborne, more worryingly, will not now vote Tory on June 4 - but for the Jury Team instead (the campaign launched by independent candidates whose PEB was firmly independent of any coherent policy sense about what these people really want from their government, presumably the whole point about politics); this temporary conversion is because Cameron will not sack his shadow cabinet colleagues such as Francis Maude or Michael Gove with the same determination as he has - rather fortuitously - cleaned out the bedblockers on the backbenches. (Owlperson remarks it is fortuitous for the next leader of the Conservative Party as well, as these people needed to go, but also acknowledges my concerns of foxy-powerbuilding in empty seats. Owlie responds that a lot of the people Foxy has approached to power-build with him turned him down.)

So here is the card of responding to a situation rather than being in control of it (as in the King of Wands). The question then is - the response to this revelation matters more than the actual revelation itself, as although I do get the image of a backdraft effect (the effect that a sudden waft of oxygen has on a raging fire) I am loathe to say that this really is Vulpendammerung quite yet, though I must note the Tens of Swordses that came out specifically for Cameron during the end of April and early May surprised me because they didn't seem attached to any particular event card except the equally opaque Wheel of Fortune. Now the situation hangs in the balance and depends on reaction, if any, to this situation rather than it directly being fatal for the poor Volpone.

Answer - The Chariot

A building of powerful, unstoppable momentum, and I get the feeling that this is inherently destructive, though it may not seem so now. The Chariot can be a powerful force for good. It can motivate people to achieve some sort of stability through perpetual motion, and through just going so fast the balance is maintained. I suppose this is what Cameron wants to do. He wants to leave Brown in a cloud of dust. But slow and steady often wins the race - the Chariot card is where wheels often come off, rather than stay on.

Direction - Ace of Cups reversed

The good drains out of the situation before too long. There is a certain susceptibility hanging round all MPs. Brown's cabinet is damaged beyond repair, probably at least for Jacqui Smith and Hazel Blears. Cambo's shadow cabinet cannot sustain their assault on backbenchers if they too are seen to have abused the same rules. The looming elections on June 4 suggest difficulties - to put it mildly - for all major parties which cannot be written off by street-smart journalists talking about "revelation fatigue", as if they can somehow now put the genie back in the bottle before it really destroys the whole place. The cup to me looks as if it is about to spill something more toxic yet, and that for the moment the lid is still on. For how long it can be inverted yet defy gravity, I don't know. But it can't do so forever.

Solution - V Cups reversed

The Fives represent some sort of imbalance, some sort of difficulties, and some sort of grief or grievance. The Five of Cups is a card where something is mourned, but something, out of sight, still remains for the person involved. This inversion means that the loss is greater than that which is still there - and that which is still there has too, in a way, been lost or squandered, even without the person knowing it was there. (The Rider-Waite image is of a person crying over spilt milk from three cups, with his back turned on the two remaining cups.) Here the solution is painful, as there are no resources, no evident alternatives, to fall back on, but something must be done to remove the grief and anger in the situation and mourn the inevitable loss.

Outcome - The Star

For now there is hope that this might pass Cambo by in some way, that he will be judged not guilty in claiming this money and that it will not catch light. For the moment at least there are no intense questions to be asked - the flames lap a bit higher round Eleanor Laing, but since she is Shadow Cabinet - she'll survive in office. In treating the situation as harmless, DC may calm it down and turn it into something which is not discussed as intensely, but if the worst comes to the worst he is no longer a paragon of virtue and can no longer protest any serious innocence while these questions remain unanswered without a mea culpa - because we are talking morals here, not legalities, and because he yesterday called for those with dodgy mortgage claims to be investigated by Scotland Yard. The brown stuff has not yet hit the fan but it is still looking questionable.

Again I have to work tomorrow morning (an assistant newsagent's life is never dull) and since I spent this evening in the agreeable company of Ian Keable, master magician (who is worth a look if he ever comes to town - the things he can do go beyond conventional magician's props and into the realm of bona fide psychic talent), I decided to do tomorrow's card today just to make sure I touched base.

Judgement

Again, another day in which a direct assault is made from on high to those active. I think it may refer to the two polls tomorrow, both of which are miserable for Labour (and only slightly less so for the Tories, who have not gained massively from Labour's discomfort; and the Tories have fallen below 30% on European election voting intentions, which could have a knock-on effect on the local elections as well). It also may go beyond mere numbers and bring down the wrath of some sort of God out there, angry that a £5 church collection was, yes, claimed on expenses.

Sacrilege.

Good night .

Two senior Tories have turned on Cameron over his policy of withdrawal from the EPP.

Lord Patten and Lord Brittan have attacked the alliance with the far-right Polish and Czech parties instead of more mainstream Conservatives within the parliament.

IDS withdrew the Tories from the EPP and Michael Howard took them back again. (Sounds so far like the Grand Old Duke of York). Foxy has been threatening this for years - it was the subject of one of William Hague's junkets to Brussels in early 2006 - but has apparently never actually done anything (sounds familiar). The "BNPski" parties in the Parliament may be less federalist than the Christian Democrats, but the problem for me is that without engaging with Europe, Cameron cannot hope to govern the country effectively. A governing party must be willing to put country before party - as Cameron himself admits in the Telegraph Q&A session he's just done - but this is just taking the party further to the right on all fronts. If the party cannot work with European institutions as they currently are, how do they expect to reform them?

It might not prompt a Southampton moment for Cameron - the focus is not as intently on Europe as it was in 2004 - but it is the first time for many years I've seen Europe cause divisions in the party, and since the attack comes through a major newspaper it might just help expose Foxy as the fraud he is - or it might make him come up with some sensible and concrete policies. We can, perhaps, but hope for either outcome.

A reading, then.

Situation - The Devil, reversed

This has the potential to be a big blow to Cameron, who has done well because he has assembled a going concern in the party and escaped major criticism for so long that I thought the party was dead from the neck downward. The Devil is intensified and his negative effect on proceedings here throws the cat among the pigeons when Cambo can least afford it. Jerrold Donington - my father-confessor of a spiritual counsellor - tells me also that the Devil represents a surprise element. In his reversed form, this is quite shocking indeed.

Appearance to the media - VI Cups, reversed

A gentle consensus is shattered and the Europhiles who supported Michael Howard - indeed, as Owlperson points out, he got more support from the "grandees" (at least those in Major's cabinet) because he was of their generation, whereas IDS and Hague they regarded as mere upstarts - are sharper in tone with Cameron when it comes to the Euro-crunch. Although they have waited until now to make their voices heard, the media may have calculated this point in the campaign allows the maximum effect on polling day without giving Cameron enough time to respond properly to Patten and Brittan's concerns; the media realises this and drops the bomb now rather than in a week's time - or a week ago when Cambo looked stronger on the expenses scandal than he has done since.

Appearance to the public - Knight of Pentacles

It may not matter much, since this card suggests the impact will be limited despite the cool timing, but it does actually start a small, genteel rebellion against Cameron's isolationist policy. The quest here - Knight cards often represent someone adventurous enough to strike out with a general aim in sight, and experiment with - here at least - the public mood - is worthwhile (hence the Pentacles) as the Tories here risk looking unable to govern properly within or with Europe and risk marginalising themselves in the hope that they can remain ideologically pure rather than like a coherent government in waiting. The quest may yet falter, but it is on the move.

Appearance to the Conservative party grassroots - II Swords, reversed

To the grassroots - those outside the Westminster village - the balance has been disrupted again overr the same issue and this is dangerous at a point where the Tories have created a fragile coalition based on ruling the country rather than overruling themselves (or threatening to do so - Owlperson). With this balance overturned, things could still get choppy even during and after polling day.

Appearance within the leadership - Death, reversed

This is what the current leadership most feared - that the grandees would not let them promote this agenda because of the desire not to rock the boat prior to the general election. No such luck. They nearly managed it - but not quite. They face the prospect of splits opening in the party at a time at which it is extremely vulnerable over the expenses scandal, with most of the more ridiculous and complicated claims coming from the Tory benches. The leadership is in denial, and this denial needs to be confronted - with all the messy results that manifested in 2004 possible and maybe even likely.

Appearance to the grandees in question - The Lovers, reversed

The situation has got intolerable enough such that the grandees had to overturn the cosy consensus of denial which had built up over Europe. A constructive approach from Michael Howard did not draw their fire and he survived because of it.. Cameron's problem is that in an attempt to manipulate the party into doing his will elsewhere he has had to appease it in this area, not understanding the isolation he would face in Europe as a result. Thus the grandees - government men themselves - have allowed themselves to descend from on high and disrupt the cosy cartel within the party leadership. Another dangerous major arcana trump for Cameron.

Internal appearance and issues within the party itself - The World

Here this card promotes the idea of a certain fate and destiny that the party has to face up to before it can continue along the happy road into government. It is made to face up to what is going on with the European side of these elections, neglected up until now because of the towering expenses inferno. It hits at a bad time - and hits the party where it hurts, or where it should hurt. It allows the party to confront the issue, but the happy side of the World is dragged down by the preponderance of reversed Major Arcana cards in this sequence such as to dent the release and ecstasy that this card normally represents.

Roots of the situation - VII Wands, reversed

The reversed Seven shows issues which, having been left to fester and blindly ignored, have come back to, in common parlance, "bite you on the bum". This was inevitable, but I reckoned it was unlikely because of the dominance of the Tories in the polls. Not so any more. The Tories' lack of discussion on Europe will return to haunt the party again and again until it stops taking the easy way out and acquiescing to the seductive isolationist agenda. It will never regain any sort of power before this issue is dealt with. Period.

Seeds sown by the situation - Page of Pentacles, reversed

Still no succour for anyone involved. This card of growth and genuine "green shoots of recovery" in a reversed aspect means that hard work is wasted - the seeds fall on stony ground. A disruption to the game now undoes three and a half years' worth of precarious balance on this issue because of the overriding idea - "power at any costs". There is no time to reverse the policy, and this leads to a poor harvest in the end.

Advice to Cameron - King of Wands, reversed

There is no time to do anything - the King of Wands, usually so nimble and quick to strike down opposition, is unable to think on his feet on this occasion. Cameron must stand his ground - he can't reverse his policy now. And it may not be enough to do anything very much for his other policies because even Simon Heffer has called them fatuous. With his classic manoeuvrability dented, he must think very hard about what to do next.

Warning to Cameron - King of Swords, reversed

What Cambo says now is crucial - overreaction would see him damaged in public, and underreaction would open wounds regardless of what he really wants. He is cool under pressure - so cool as to be frozen - but this card suggests here he should avoid rash words and avoid a Southampton moment by perhaps allowing the grandees to say their piece and leave the stage. The card, however, carries an ominous warning from his predecessor that it is difficult to escape the debate of Europe for too long and still look like a credible prime minister.

Direction - IX Swords, reversed

This can only get worse. A storm like this can be weathered easily in normal times, but this card is like an impacted tooth - the pain won't go away and won't just be wiggled out of position like one which has just died. This card suggests temporary difficulties becoming more permanent, and pain from this is bound to follow, even after June 4.

Solution - Page of Cups

There is a solution to this, and it is to be accepting of other viewpoints and to resist the temptation to smear or talk down the grandees' concerns. It is incumbent now on Cameron to think about what he is doing and learn to risk his party's wrath by engaging with Europe and saying no to the fascist isolationists who make up his proposed new grouping. Will he do this? Are bears catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods?

Outcome - Justice, reversed

The issue is not given the consideration it requires, and thus justice here works against those who bury their head in the sand and pretend a fundamental part of Britain's foreign alliances does not exist. The potential of this card is to ruin Cameron's day in another, and potentially devastating manner. Not before time, in my view.

I have to work early tomorrow, and will be out in the evening at a magic-comedy show at the local village hall, so am doing tomorrow's card of the day today.

The X Cups, reversed was very stubborn and so this is tomorrow's prediction: sunny, with a few scattered showers.

Things are getting very tense now the European elections are fast approaching, and there is an upset in the general propaganda that the two main parties are peddling, along with Nick Clegg's anger, only slightly less faked because of what his MPs have been up to. I do sense a slight lull in this over the weekend, but only a slight one - there are still more people to come and another resignation has followed tonight: Elliot Morley is to step down from Parliament after his little altercations with the media and fees office.

This card may also have to do with the obscene amount of "golden goodbye" to be paid out to the miscreants who have jumped ship. Although Owlperson notes that it is not easy to wind things up without assistance, particularly in the event of being voted out rather than just retiring, but he still admits there is a deep need from the public for vengeance and that those who have actually been found out to have misused the system should have their assets sequestered to pay for this golden goodbye during the period prior to the general election. Those who have merely made unethical claims should have these allowances paid by the state and should not actually be allowed to claim for them. This needs to be formalised, but there is a unique chance that this is possible at the moment, particularly if Labour and the Conservatives suffer heavily in Thursday's polls.

Here, in the reversed Ten, the cups are running dry and the potential for anyone to make any personal gain from this scandal, whether in the sense of personal egotism (David Cameron, Esther Rantzen) or propagandistic benefit (the PR enthusiasts banging away about a non-sequitur depriving the public of the discussion of just what should now be done, perhaps to prosecute those who may be guilty of outright fraud), is running out.

A brilliant idea came to me the other day - Jacqui Smith's bath plug. Rather missed now the comedy aspect of her porn films on expenses has passed into this terrible, terrible 9/11 scenario, someone really did pull the plug on all of this.

Gurgle. 

Another Downfall parody video from before the expenses scandal, during Smeargate.

Many a true word is spoken - or dubbed on - in jest.

You can truly never have enough Downfall parodies, can you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNrBqrNhdGU

Trying not to offend anyone who could be offended, someone has put more subtitles onto the scene in Downfall where Adolf Hitler finds out that the grand counteroffensive has failed.

No comment, but it was as ROFL as any of these takes on the masterful film which, had it been done in English or dubbed, would never have provided so much entertainment long after the original stopped resonating so much.

Watch at your own risk. Owlperson has sensitive issues with Hitler, so in deference to him I'm not going to try and embed it, but enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHbNPlDAUwE

Bill Cash is the next person in the spotlight, and it seems it is Cash by name, cash by nature. Poor man. My uncle is the former Tory mayor (and current Independent councillor) in his Stone constituency, and has had some choice words for Cash in the past - they would be unprintable if Uncle Phil used such language himself. Owlperson concurs with his assessment and is happy to see the usual suspects come trooping through the cash-for-just-about-everything lobby. David Cameron says Cash has serious questions to answer if, I'm sure, he can be bothered to ask them. Letitia Cash was featured in an article about Tory women five and a half years ago which inspired me to buy a belted mackintosh which, like my Tory aspirations at the moment, is missing the belt that held it together and rather makes the old Mary Whitehouse Experience character Milky Milky look suave and dapper.

To even the scoreline a bit, Rosie Winterton is the next Labour scalp here.

The political card of the day is a Major Arcana "trump", which signifies big movements, although I feel this means for the moment behind the scenes rather than in front of the press.

Justice

The Justice card differs from the nominally similar Judgement card in being man-made arbitration and its logical conclusion rather than divine intervention or outside force imposing an ajudication by force. Justice here means that those people who are in control have their say, and decide on the basis of clear sight and fair play. The card depicts the familiar figure of Justice - a stern woman with sword and scales - with the only difference from the modern depiction being she is unhindered by the customary blindfold. This is an earlier viewing of the figure of Justice; the blindfold is a modern interpretation of what Justice means.

An illustration of this concept and its symbolism is the figure which adorns the gates of Dublin Castle (in Dublin, Ireland, natch...though since Leeds Castle is actually in Kent, it doesn't necessarily "go without saying"). The castle was the home of the Viceroy of Ireland during the period after Cromwell's seizure of the island and the period in which it was by and large independent but under the suzerainty of Great Britain (that changed in the early 1800s when Ireland was fully subjugated to Westminster and not released from that grip until the establishment of the Free State in the 1920s). It was the home of justice in Ireland - not just judicial justice but of the wider concept of government by the British puppet state under the "Kingdom of Ireland" and then as part of the union after home rule was abolished. Correspondingly, the figure of Justice stands looking out over the courtyard. She is as depicted on this card - without a blindfold, and with her head approvingly looking in the direction of the palace court itself.

This is always taken by Irish nationalists to represent the notion that British justice, under whose auspices the figure was erected, was partial. The lack of a blindfold, both on the statuette and on the card in front of me, suggests that Justice entertains more than should enter normal due process of law. Juries are selected in this country on the basis of not knowing the defendant or plaintiff (Owlperson was a lawyer, he should know) and thus can arbitrate from a completely neutral point of view. However, the difference in this figure led some to regard the statue as symbolic in a direct manner that justice in Ireland was partial - to the British monarchy - and until something was done to re-establish not only home rule but full independence, then true impartial justice could never be done.

However this concept of Justice here leaves out the idea that actually, Justice in this sense cannot be done unless we know all the facts; unless we can see the evidence before us. It is no surprise that this card falls on the day the Labour NEC "Star Chamber" meets - in secret, of course, but then this is a party matter and would be hampered by the scrutiny of the press who have their own separate agenda, largely involving the downfall of Labour and of the Prime Minister. Brown in my opinion can do a lot more thorough justice than Cameron can, largely because Cameron is too reliant on ad hoc systems played out in public with a semblance of a panel constructed with him and the whips, whilst the Labour NEC is constructed such that the membership of the party is represented in various forms and although controversies have arisen in the past (with the 1997 contest hotly fought by Peter Mandelson and Ken Livingstone largely the only time it has ever really hit the headlines; I voted, by the way, in that contest and voted for both of them) it has largely been a body ignored by the press. Labour's bureaucratic notion of justice therefore suggests that actually an unhindered justice is taking place here, and while perhaps the Irish nationalists may have had a point, the figure without a blindfold is actually a more historically important symbol of Justice than that with a blindfold (oops, almost wrote "blingfold", which would be interesting to see...maybe a spangly one which the contestants on The Apprentice could sell for us on QVC...).

Owlperson notes that the Tories do things differently, preferring ad hoc controls on their party and debate. However, I put it to him that this has often backfired in the past. Although I often praise him for other reasons, I remember the seeming absurdity of what Michael Howard said to the party conference as Shadow Foreign Secretary in 1998.

Last week, there was a debate on Europe at the Labour Party conference - behind closed doors!

If you hold your debates in secret, you must have something to hide!

Madam Chairman, we - we have nothing to hide. We are confident to be leading the debate.

The Tories were leading the debate, indeed, but the chaos and devastation of the mid to late 1990s was such that perhaps the European debates should have been conducted in private - behind closed doors - and a consensus reached, at least at leadership level, to avoid the damaging divisions which ultimately - and sadly, when he had moved into a position of proposing his own moderate Euro-scepticism as an alternative to the reeking Europhobia which has come back to taunt the party with the prospect of sharing a group with the "BNPski" parties of Eastern Europe - damaged his own leadership in 2004 because he could not come to grips with his own party's wilful determination to have that debate in public and not in private. Where Cambo falls down is not having that debate at all and giving us potential Conservative voters the worst of all possible worlds.

It was also symptomatic, Owlperson tells me, of other divisions in the Tory Party at the time, and cannot be taken in isolation as Labour is as equally split by Europe as the Tories, but Labour managed to avoid the debate or subsume it into internal party cohesion because they were - and still are - broadly united on other fronts. The Tories lack a single unifying element to their ideology which keeps them together during rough times. Labour have the explicit commitment to social justice which keeps them focussed on achieving and maintaining power, and this to a certain extent still holds the party together long after it should have collapsed, as the Tories did in 1992-1997, into a dysfunctional, squabbling mess. No amount of media manipulation or fire on the leadership has broken Labour ranks, even at Brown's nadir last summer. Johnson too might have done a Miliband and fired the first salvo too soon coming out in favour of PR, and Owlperson says the last person Labour will turn to in this crisis is Alan Johnson, who has no ridiculous expense claims but a skeleton lurking further back in his closet which will see him destroyed too. There will be few survivors from this who are currently on any frontbench; OP is saying he is working hard to save people on both Labour and Tory benches but that those who take over will by and large come from the middle ranks, and former cabinets, as anyone inside the current Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet are doomed to the same oblivion as their leaderships.

Returning to the main issue, Labour's careful deliberation may deliver more lasting and concrete justice but the Queen of Wands, as a clarifying card, suggests that a lack of control over the situation in general may mean they are only now able to respond or react to changing circumstances, and not even being in full control over the responses to events means that the full extent of Labour's response to the crisis may be to exacerbate it rather than bring it under human management.

What Owlperson and other spirit guides feel - if we can bring them down to earth a bit and make them focus on actual events rather than the view from upstairs, though I get the feeling they are enjoying this as much or even more than we are - is that this is a shift to do with 2012 and to do with another version of 1688 - and that the expenses scandal is a tip of an iceberg, and the catalyst for a really destructive shake-up of the political system. It is not something that can be palmed off by the perpetrators with PR or their own favourite solution (government by SMS being the best Cambo can come up with), it will need the sheep separated from the goats and the ability to sort Parliament out, sort the government out, and bring lasting, genuine Justice to bear. Nick Clegg's proposal that there should be no summer recess until this is sorted is fairly prescient (makes you wonder what he's been taking) and although I consider his article in the Grauniad yesterday to be just another partisan manipulation of justice and judgement, it gets close to the truth of what will be going on this summer and what we now have to do to re-enact 1688.

In summary - Justice takes many forms, but here she works with the facts and figures, with her eyes open, not blindfolded by cynical partisanship. Expect intense fireworks, but only after the deliberation has today taken place.

This just in. Christopher Fraser has also done the decent thing and is standing down.

Good riddance to Julie. Margaret ... not sure I can say the same, as I said, though she should have done the decent thing weeks ago.

I may still sell my now useless personal testimonial from Margaret on eBay, whether I can find it or not; since it became redundant five years ago when I crossed the floor, I don't know. Apparently I am good at fulfilling menial tasks. And I don't cheat on expenses either.  In fact when I worked voluntarily for the Labour party at their Millbank Tower HQ, I got my railcard paid for and £5 for lunch expenses. It ended up costing me 25p per day as a result. On some of these claims, I could have had lunch at the Ivy every day I was there in the summer of 1999.

So where does this leave Esther Rantzen?

One thing is certain, though, Middle England is not pleased. An otherwise respectable gentleman came into the shop this afternoon for a paper and when he got to the door and saw the poster with a photograph of John Redwood up there (presenting a large cheque from the local am-dram society's pantomime to the charity they were fundraising for), he made guns with his fingers and went postal at the photograph. The director of the panto, the man who gave us the photo in the first place, told me Redwood hadn't impressed him - that he'd been in and out in five minutes - long before the expenses scandal broke.

Goodness knows what would have happened if we lived in Bromsgrove...

...the only person you are kidding is yourself, and possibly the Conservative Party too. You've had too many cards off me, and they are all generally bad, so perhaps you should go now and

Cameron is too spineless to get rid of you, evidently, but the longer he obfuscates on this, the more damage she does to the party and to him.

Women like Laura Moffat, Teresa May and Fiona MacTaggart have been in parliament happily without scamming the taxpayer. Those three may live too close to London to be taking too much in second-home allowances, but there are enough Labour women MPs who don't claim much either and enough people in general who aren't tangled up in as much mess as you are.

The more lies and spin this woman puts out, the more devastating she is to the Tories, in Bromsgrove and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Terry Waite is proposing himself as another independent in the Suffolk area. The VIII Pentacles, reversed suggests his effectiveness as an MP is questionable, because Owlperson says that he would do well in government - good experience, temperate views and honest projection of himself - but would not stand for a party which could potentially get there.

Today's card is quite a nice one -

X Cups

Things are resolved somewhat today - or appear to be resolved - in the best interests of everyone concerned. This card however brings the caveat that things are still only on the emotional, rather than practical, plane - there is little actual substance involved, unlike in the Ten of Pentacles.

Julie Kirkbride continues to be a menace - she is now refusing to attend a public meeting. Personally I think she shouldn't have to go through this ritual humiliation - she should just be sacked, now, before she causes any more difficulties. Her card is the Knight of Pentacles, reversed - her personal ability to do anything remotely serious is running out, very fast, and she must know that even if she is not forced out, she will be perpetually damaged goods from now until she retires. She would be advised to take the quick way out - resignation from her seat voluntarily - without having to be made to walk the plank, either by Cameron or by her local party - because this would be the best way of protecting her future career prospects elsewhere. Neil and Christine Hamilton have not exactly suffered outside Parliament, but then their chutzpah is legendary, and Julie just looks pathetic now.

She is going to have to go before she takes Vulpes Vulpes down with her. Catching up with The Apprentice after Barcelona's stunning 2-0 defeat of Manchester United, and to be honest, the hat-trick needs to be wiping La Kirkbride off the map of Britain. What a 21 days it has been!

In other news, the aptly named Sir John Butterfill, MP for Bournemouth, has made a £600,000 profit after playing the property market and avoiding CGT, and Lynne Jones - a leftwinger, for Christ's sake - is under scrutiny for wallpaper and interior decorating.

For Kirkbride, The Hermit suggests she is now utterly isolated after her brother claimed on her expenses for adding an extra bedroom to her Bromsgrove mansion.

For Butterball, sorry, Butterfill, VI Swords, reversed, suggests that he had further ambitions which are now in abeyance after this scandal has laid him low.

And for Jones - VI Cups - which means that she might be spending more time with her furniture in future after she is called to account.

Labour's NEC Star Chamber finally meets tomorrow to discuss all these deselections for their party, so perhaps we will finally see some root and branch clearance of the deadwood on their backbenches and frontbench to put the Conservatives to shame.

I can't wait.

Simon Heffer, as we all know, is deciding whether to challenge Sir Alan Haselhurst, just like Esther Rantzen declaring her candidacy against her nemesis Margaret Moran. Presumably he understands that would cost him his Conservative Party membership, if indeed he has one. Owlperson can't tell me whether he does or not, but I'm looking forward to him declaring his candidacy and facing potential expulsion from the party that he may or may not be a member of - and if he is, and if he wins a seat, whether Cameron unctuously co-opts him as he did David Davis' campaign last summer.

So will he really do so? And how would he do? Let's ask the cards.

Past - Simon Heffer - The Star

Heffer has always seen himself as a potential politician, and his dislike of Cameron comes out distinctly in his articles (though unfortunately this makes him a useless barometer for my purposes of measuring the health of the party). Regardless, he has previously had faith in the political system, and has always played the game through the ordinary channels. Going it alone might be difficult, but at least he has a commitment to core Conservative values, and would not be a bad choice for Saffron Walden as a deep Tory heartland constituency. Owlperson is more convinced that he is at least genuinely ambitious for political office rather than Rantzen's egomania being a particular handicap when it comes to working with the machine.

Past - Sir Alan - Judgement, reversed

Sir Alan has evaded justice this time, and although he has fulfilled Heffer's initial request by paying back the £12,000 misclaimed money for gardening assistance, there is a possibility Heffer might still stand. Evasion of justice is a feature of a lot of these cases: the most effective judgement must be at the ballot box and those who doubt they will be able to look their constituents in the eye have already done the decent thing. However Haselhurst, once upon a time tipped to be the next Speaker, cannot outrun Judgement for long, and Heffer might still stand despite the money being paid back.

Present - Simon Heffer - Knight of Wands, reversed

Heffer might well be pulling back from declaring his candidature. It looks as if his initial condition on Haselhurst has been fulfilled, and the reversed knight signifies here the ending or abortion of a quest. The Wands, by their nature, are not serious cards; they are flimsy and superficial and Heffer largely proposed himself in order to bounce Haselhurst into repayment. He may still find a political outlet - and follow in the footsteps of Boris Johnson; Owlperson will not rule anything out - but for the moment it looks as if he will not actually need to stand.

Present - Sir Alan - The Lovers, reversed

Sir Alan is not liked, and can find cold comfort in Heffer's refusal, as yet, to declare his candidature. He may still find the going rough, and the constituency going sour on him even if he keeps his place as the official Conservative candidate, but this is now a matter for him alone rather than duel between him and a Tory-aligned independent.

Future - Simon Heffer - King of Cups, reversed

Never say never, Owlperson is warning. However, this card, while not particularly comely, suggests Heffer will involve himself more in active service and less in onlooking, and may have been symptomatic of a desire to step forward as a more active participant. The King of Cups is a deep, emotional commander; he is Cameron's significator in my old Four Kings leadership spread (Blair being the King of Wands, Brown the King of Pentacles, and the King of Swords the potential insurgent who might yet emerge to derail the cosy oligarchy in British politics this term round; one must always keep a wild card handy because predictions are often rather off...I have a collection of "famous last words" dating back to Kinnock and Thatcher fighting out the 1991 general election...), but here he is more active than Cameron, and more strident than the laid-back Water king. (Another King of Cups is Ken Clarke, another is Barack Obama, while Boris Johnson is a King-of-Cups in waiting if he can transform the buffoon image into genuine statesmanship.) Heffer goes from commentator to action-man, but may not actually stand in this particular seat at this particular time.

Future - Sir Alan - VIII Cups, reversed

Sir Alan remains sat on Saffron Walden until the next election, but may have missed his chance to go out with dignity, to recognise that his time has passed and stand aside in favour of a younger candidate without the taint of the Parliament of Manure. (Ordure! Ordure!) This card in this aspect represents a stubborn refusal to move on, move up, move out or move over, and he will pay the price in the end.

Result of candidacy decision - Page of Pentacles, reversed

A potential political career is nipped in the bud, and Heffer will find other soil in which to plant his further ambitions. He has ideals rather than ideas, and may not be famous enough in the outside world - unlike Rantzen - to have the profile needed to clean up in Saffron Walden. I may yet be wrong - this card also suggests he currently has a seed to plant and just needs to find the right soil, and Owlperson says if he had the decision to make over candidacies, he would offer Heffer a safe seat somewhere else because of his character and ability to do the job, say, of a culture minister, without the idiocy that came with Johnson's disastrous first foray into political office. So right person, wrong time.

Result of election in Saffron Walden - VII Cups, reversed

The illusions of the electorate as to the probity of their safe Conservative MP are shattered and they now have a choice between someone - and someone else. If Haselhurst lasts the distance to the election (clarifying for this, the X Cups, reversed suggests maybe not) then there is a possibility that he may not survive even if he is opposed by a candidate without the profile even of Simon Heffer. The seat is a target for independent attention, and there might be a vacancy for another independent to rock the boat sooner rather than later.

While I disagree with their stance, this interesting blog has some coherent criticism of the party system, particularly where it overlaps with the personalities of their current leaders. The system has been degraded over the past century, but there was never a golden age and the rise of the political parties has solidified the situation to the extent that David Cameron and Gordon Brown have been allowed to happen. The calcification of the political system has been down to personality, not policy or procedure.

Personally political parties are necessary in a modern democracy to maintain some coherency of purpose and government; many "non-party" systems (such as Kenya under Arap Moi) are or were unstable and puppets of the president who maintained a show parliament. Any system where independents congregate is bound to splinter into factionalism; conversely, parties who maintained a solid bloc in opposition to a dictatorship, such as Solidarity in Poland, are almost bound to break up on entry to a democratic system, since the aims of a mass movement in totalitarian societies differ from the need for government in a new democracy. In fact, in most of Eastern Europe parties which proliferated after the end of communism re-amalgamated into larger blocs. The old communist parties in Poland and elsewhere also re-established themselves as democratic movements - in Poland from 1997 to 2005 Leszek Miller and Aleksandr Kwasniewski, both activists in the old PZPR (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnikow, or the Polish United Workers' Party), ruled in conjunction with the new Social and Liberal Democrat Party, or SLD. I don't believe there is any system in the world which is truly democratic where political parties are not a feature of the landscape.

If we are disillusioned and angry at the people currently in charge - as most of us are, my father having some choice epithets to throw at David Cameron's government-by-SMS plans last night - then the people in charge deserve prosecution and jailing, rather than the system redesigned to change the face of politics. The problem is Nadine Dorries and Julie Kirkbride, Margaret Moran, Alistair Darling and Shahid Malik, not FPTP, AV+, STV or the party system. Until this is acknowledged by all three party leaders then no justice will be done.

We do not need text messages to tell us who voted for what - we're not stupid. We just need honest people, probably a codified constitution, and most certainly an election held on our terms. Owlperson's idea is just to give us martial law and a hand-cast ballot paper: Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, and SNP/Plaid Cymru in their own areas. No names, no symbols, no manifestos, no independents with an ego the size of Luton, no nothing. A new parliament elected on current boundaries would be established Put the current parties into the hands of people who would act as caretakers through a constitutional convention and series of fraud trials, with 20 years' parliamentary service and Cabinet-level experience a must (peerages may have to be revoked but that would be a small price to pay). Then we'd see what the people really felt.

If you think that is harsh for a few duck islands and a house full of dry rot in Southampton, I think it would help sort out this country's political system once and for all and take it out of the hands of the current people who want to twist it into their own shapes for their own gain.

The political card of the day is

VIII Wands, reversed

This is the card which intensifies and begins to direct momentum in one particular direction, but reversed it becomes difficult and tricky to control that momentum and allow it to work in one's favour. This means that however bad the situation, there is little currently to do with it than try and respond to the day-to-day revelations, rather than try and direct or channel it into useful and productive energy. This will undoubtedly escape the cynical minds of Cameron and Brown, but it adds to the pressure building up in the situation and has particular relevance for Julie Kirkbride and, Owlperson says, Nadine Dorries.

The Daily Mirror reports more about the long-running expenses scandal soap opera "Julie's Jollies".

La Kirkbride stands accused now of employing her sister as a secretary answering constituency post. This is not unusual - the only reason Derek Conway got sacked for it and that it was a killer blow for the leadership of Iain Duncan Smith in Betsygate was because the family members in question were on the payroll but did not do anything - but Kirkbride has snubbed a phone-in interview trying to get some sense of remorse and contrition from her, and although the sister does actually do some work in return for the £12k she gets from Julie, this is no longer a good enough explanation for the employment of family members. In the 1997 book Commons Knowlege, by Paul Flynn (accused last year of using his communications allowance to maintain his fabulous party political gossip blog, now bearing a disclaimer to the contrary), he warns against employing family, though it happens a lot and Owlperson says he has no objection to the idea because the salary is kept in the family. The only objection, obviously, is that money has been paid to people within the family that do not then go on to actually do any work, leading to the downfall of Derek Conway. Kelvin Hopkins MP, who shared Margaret Moran's constituency office with her when I worked there in 1998, employed his dragon-like wife who was very particular about everyone chipping in to the tea-making duties. I have no objection, so long as work is done.

But it looks like Flynn's "mature advice" not to employ family has become more solid disapproval and Kirkbride in obfuscating - and Cameron by association in holding off on axeing her and other Shadow Cabinet claimants - is only digging her grave and ultimately that of her timid leader who wants us to buy the fact that communicating results of votes to people's mobile phones is a coherent plan for parliamentary reform (it sounds more like the periodic and rather pathetic Blairite ideas to "increase turnout" by allowing us to vote in Tescos. I get enough mobile spam as it is (I must stop using the numbers in Chat magazine, it's my bill it's inflating) and I don't really want more rubbish from people who probably won't be getting my vote. If they want my vote, they have to actually put something forward that will help me in terms of (drum roll)...health, education and social security.

Sooooooo...a reading for Kirkbride and the effect of her continued corrosive presence on the Tory benches.

Situation - II Cups, reversed

The issue here is - I'm getting - "arrogance" and the inability to come to a conclusion which is of mutual benefit to Kirkbride and the party in general, including its leadership. The longer it goes on, the more corrosive it is, but the parliamentary demise of her husband Andrew Mackay means that if Kirkbride goes, the dynasty comes to an end. Here Kirkbride is trying to cling on when she knows she is ultimately doomed, and wrecking in the process her "marriage" to the party, and perhaps even her marriage to Mackay.

Appearance to the public of her continued presence - VI Pentacles, reversed

It is unfair of Cameron to be sacking the older members of his parliamentary party while keeping on someone with her nose so deep in a number of troughs. Duck islands notwithstanding, this presence gives the lie to Cameron's desire to clean out the party and show the leadership he is so proudly trumpeting, and this unfairness is likely to become toxic if Kirkbride does not do the decent thing and resign.

Appearance to the media of her continued presence - Ace of Swords, reversed

While she is still there, there can be no trumpeted Tory renewal, which would hand Foxy a sword with which to end the Prime Minister's reign and impose his own. Although the spectre of Howard Flight looms large (a decision which also exemplifies the reversed Ace of Swords, where Michael Howard took a hasty and over-agitated decision which left Flight without a seat as well as a position in the Shadow Cabinet, thus wrecking the delicate momentum the Tories had in 2005 to go further than they actually did), there is an opposite dynamic here which again suggests the media is not going to stand for any more obfuscation from Cameron. He needs to sack her or risk his crowing being seen as hollow, all too hollow.

Appearance to the grassroots Conservatives of her continued presence - IX Wands

Grassroots Conservatives are a fickle bunch, Owlperson tells me, but they are the wrong people to be dominating this issue. They are supporting Kirkbride for the moment, and struggling to close ranks around her. The more they do this, the more they damage their leadership and future prospects for government in the process, and this defensive card shows the steamroller is already heading for Bromsgrove just as it did for Bracknell in the end.

Internal issues: Cameron with Kirkbride - VII Cups, reversed

Cameron is actually under no illusion here that Kirkbride is damaging the party and his need to sack her is being hindered by a strong need to keep all his party crumbling in his hands. Removing the fantasies of complete control is one thing - he knows he doesn't have that over the grassroots, and he also may understand Kirkbride is a popular local MP - but his illusions are not stopping this process from coming to a conclusion. So what is?

Internal issues: Kirkbride with Cameron - X Cups, reversed

Kirkbride regards Cameron as a necessary evil, and a tool to get her into a position where she can form a governmental power base. This is not based on huge amounts of substance, more ambition and beliefs without back-up solidity. Nevertheless she needs him as much as he does not need her, and is clinging on because her ambition is greater than her husband's. The upright Ten would mean that her ambition is at least based in reality or potential reality. But the reversal of the card means that her opinion of herself and her importance is grossly inflated - and that she is now doing the party a lot more harm than good.

Internal issues: Parliamentary Party's role - Knight of Pentacles

The Parliamentary Party actually has at least a possible role in solving the problem; it is tentatively putting together an agenda of its own, whether to protect itself against the media or - in Owlperson's view - to expand its own power against the leadership which, like the Blairites of the 1990s but with far less substance to show for it, is continually abusing it and not delivering it what it needs to support the leadership. It, as the Knight, is able to assert itself only in response or reaction to Cameron, but it is learning to defend its interests and not to put up with flim-flam from above. In the 1990s, Labour had enough confidence to say to its recalcitrant backbenchers that Blair was worth putting up with, and the result was satisfaction and confidence. When I meet Tory backbenchers - or even Tory councillors locally - I am struck by a lack of confidence backing up their promises. This Knight therefore shows the confidence is growing - but in opposition and reaction to the leader.

Roots of the situation - King of Pentacles

Cameron has acted well in response to this situation - partly because of criticism in the Derek Conway incident 18 months ago where he delayed his action by up to 24 hours which brought some muted charges he had obfuscated and been indecisive. He learned from that. But the pressure is growing on him to do something genuine with this - sack a few Shadow Cabinet members, sack Kirkbride who is going completely off the rails (and she should take Nadine Dorries with her too). The situation reminds me of the story of the Golden Goose, where people are snared in by their own greed and look foolish. Cameron is Dummling, waddling along with a golden duck (in fact in some cultures the story is known as the Golden Mallard) - perhaps he needs to turn around, see the stream of followers all stuck to the bird, and release them. This card shows a will present - why won't he use it to genuine advantage?

Seeds of the situation - V Pentacles, reversed

The reversed Five shows a realisation of the real needs of this situation. The illusions dissipate and the correct course of action becomes obvious. What it entails is another matter, but hopefully this will be shown by the next section of the reading.

Advice to Kirkbride - The World

Take a hike, Julie. Although the World symbolises the pinnacle of someone's current existence, it also shows an ending. If she goes now, she might be remembered as a good MP who had a good innings. If she doesn't, she risks being dragged down with the rest of the rabble involved. Her husband has already lost his job, but she has multiple black marks against her name, and needs to completely call it quits before she too is bundled out of the window.

Advice to Cameron re: Kirkbride - VIII Pentacles

He is being urged to use her in this instance to create a genuine show of leadership. It is easy to sack superfluous backbenchers, but because Julie may be a useful member of his government later on, he is loathe to get rid of someone with her parliamentary and political experience (mostly negative - Owlperson points out she was the first to agitate against Howard both before and after the 2005 election, because she had negotiated a position with David Davis, who she backed in the abortive party coup of late May 2005). The problem is he needs to show that he is not favouring friends in this area. Kirkbride and Dorries, at least, should be jettisoned to show his ad hoc response to this crisis has real bite, before Labour's NEC Star Chamber reports and puts bureaucratic solidity onto their currently sclerotic response to their travails. If Cameron obfuscates any longer, the NEC will trump him, so he needs to work now to create a genuine direction for this party politcal game.

Warning to Kirkbride - The Tower

Her days are numbered, probably less than 3. She cannot win this battle and needs to jump before she is pushed.

Warning to Cameron re: Kirkbride - II Pentacles

The momentum is moving in Cameron's direction at the moment, but things are subject to change if he cannot do this for the political good of the people rather than his own self-interest. If he wanted Kirkbride for himself after the election, he should have called her in over this a long time ago. Things may turn against him, and his willingness to allow Kirkbride to run riot with his tacit support is moving the narrative on from how clever his initial response was to how limp-wristed his long-term ideas and pragmatic decision-making is. She needs to go - or things will move in Labour's favour again.

Going forward - Kirkbride - IV Wands, reversed

The stool is kicked out from underneath her. The Four represents tenuous structure, but this flimsy support is going and she cannot rely on anything to hold her weight. She will leave - and if this is not soon and swift a decision, it will bring the house down around her.

Going forward - Cameron re: Kirkbride - Queen of Swords, reversed

Cameron is playing with fire here - he is risking a lot on just one woman. He does manage to overturn her, but it is a decision that comes too late for credibility in "leadership". Meanwhile, she keeps on getting worse and worse. He needs to stop her causing his party grief and shame. But he is too indecisive to do much more than gradually withdraw support; therefore he is caught in a situation where conscious reason - represented by the Queen of Swords - dictates one thing, but his practical necessity dictates another. This is a difficult decision to make - can he make it in time?

General direction - VI Cups, reversed

The scandal has damaged the Tories' placid and gentle road to the finish, and they like Labour will be the ones to lose most from this. There is no going back to pre-scandal days - it represents an overturning of the status quo so much so that there is the risk of anarchy. Kirkbride could be dispensed with - so why isn't she? She upset the calm contentment of the party, so she should by rights leave. Why isn't more being done to remove her from Bromsgrove? Anyway, this upsets the balance in the party and moves it towards the difficulties it faced at this point in 2004. I can't say I'm unhappy with this - but all the same it is a crisis now of their own making.

Bromsgrove result - May 2009 - The Hanged Man, reversed

Julie Kirkbride hangs on, but perhaps only just. If there is difficulties at the Euro elections, her situation might be further weakened, as will Cameron's, but she manages to weasel it out.

Bromsgrove result - general election - Ace of Cups, reversed

The chance for renewal averted. The result damages the party and, all other things being equal, this has made the party unwilling to face up to the needs of their electorate - and they pay the price. It is not unlikely that a charismatic independent - again, all things being otherwise equal - could stand and depose Kirkbride herself. It is also a result which will have implications for the party as a whole.

Solution - Death, reversed

This is a dangerous situation; Death reversed intensifies the theme of transformation - an end and a beginning - into the deadly strike of a death with no resurrection afterwards. The situation is reaching a point where the party faces difficult choices but flunks the test - and this could get messy.

Outcome for now - V Swords

Something does happen to solve the problem,and put it to bed - but it is a negative, pyrrhic victory which just delays and intensifes the negativity of the situation. Labour at least has the excuse of using the NEC to arbitrate the resignations of MPs who have been caught out in this scandal; however with Cameron's ad hoc leadership, shirking the question of Kirkbride means that he cannot then change his mind; if he leaves Bromsgrove alone and decides only one half of the dubious duo needs to be taught a lesson in home economics, he has no way later of returning to the problem if, say, an independent of the stature of Esther Rantzen challenges Kirkbride. This needs solved, but it is not wholly resolved to the satisfaction of the Bromsgrove electorate.

Outcome long-term - IX Swords, reversed

The Nine upright is cruelty, ongoing terror and distress, but reversed it shows this distress coming to a head and being dissipated. There will be a solution, but it will be to neither Cameron's nor Kirkbride's favour.

Dangerous times for everyone.

At Christmas there was a radio show - I think it was the Now Show, I can't think the News Quiz would be so violent - with a silly ditty that went "I hope that Boris Johnson and David Cameron/have a bike smash" or something along those lines that scans better. Although I am no fan of either of them - both should have stayed in the Eton ghetto they came from - I didn't really think that a national satirical show should have broadcast such a stupid and horrible song with no real comedic value.

Since then, however, Cambo lost his bike again to another thief, and Boris has just narrowly averted being run over by a lorry.

I'm not really sure how it works - was the song-writer subconsciously psychic and peering ahead with the depths of his mind (and it would have to be the depths to have the audacity to write that lyric) - or was he willing something nasty to happen to both of them?

In which case, fate has conspired to stick two fingers up to the songwriter, and rightly so. Neither man, lightweights they may be, deserves to be killed in a road accident. It didn't get anything like the number of complaints the BBC got over Sachsgate, but I did complain at the time and am surprised at how much life does narrowly escape imitating art.

There is a song in this manner, though it is more cryptic and more gentle. It uses animals - and the odd farm implement - to get across a seemingly nonsense rhyme, yet to me a few years ago it began to make eerie sense. See if you can spot the allusions to recent times in this bit of lyricism from a 19th century Welsh broadsheet (of the balladeers' kind). Let your mind relax, and imagine the words of the song, and see whose face - or faces come to mind. I first heard it while doing A-Level Politics in 1998 and wrote a cartoon of the first stanza.

Other animal nonsense songs occur, some more cryptic than others. Of course, with this stuff, you have to remember that although I was - aherm - foxed by some of the verses here in 2006 when I drew the song more completely in my cartoon diaries, all of them now make reasonable sense.

The Seven Wonders - from the singing of Maddy Prior and June Tabor

I heard it sung yesterday morning
Ta-la-ring-ting-ring-tethering-too
That a ship of lead swam o'er the ocean
Ta-la-ring-ting...
And a ship of cork sank to the bottom
Ta-la-ring-ting...
That is one of the seven wonders
Ta-la-ring-ting-ring-tethering-too

I heard it said that the partridge
On the shore was playing stoolball
And the balls were made of sand
That is two of the seven wonders

The pruning hook got in the meadow
By itself it was reaping
And in a day it cut an acre
That is three of the seven wonders

I heard it said there was a pig
And on its cart it was loading bracken
And its load it was making ready
And that is four of the seven wonders

I heard it said that in Llangollen
That the moon was teaching reading
And an excellent verse it gave there
And that is five of the seven wonders

I heard it said that on the rock
That the dove it kept a tavern
With its little cup to test the drink
And that is six of the seven wonders

I heard it said the swallow on the sea
That he was making an iron horseshoe
With golden hammer and silver anvil
And that's the last of the seven wonders
Ta-la-ring-ting-ring-tethering-too!

They have, hinting at the moon verse, used a bit of license in the name of the Welsh town. And to get the dove verse, you have to remember why Charlie Kennedy left office.

Title says it all.

I used to work for Moran, who struck me as being a pleasant woman (more pleasant than subsequent MPs that I've worked for and happier to promote someone who was enthusiastic but thinks slightly too much outside the box) but it's a shame that she appears to have been tainted by this scandal because the most endearing memory is the garden party she held at the end of the summer I spent in Luton and how ordinary it seemed. I think I had been brought up to see Parliament and MPs in general being a bit like Francis Urqhuart in House of Cards - posh flats, swish demi-tasse cups, leafy London homes and extensive country estates to shoot on. The difficult thing is that Moran stands accused of gross fiddling, which I don't dispute. But personally I can't deride her too much because she did help me on the way to finding my political way, even if it was outside the Labour Party, and to understand the ordinary nature of politicians. I've also been to parties with John Redwood and Rob Marris, and both again seem human - all too human. Laughing at the idiots turns quickly to dismay that good people have been brought down by this as well - but there can be no sympathetic aspect to what is coming. 

So will Esther - who I don't know and who is well acquainted with the high life, despite her tireless work for charity - win Luton South, will Margaret hang on - or will something else happen, a wild card enter the situation? Let's see what the cards say.

Past - IV Swords

Moran did begin as a good MP - and I worked for her a year after her election to the House of Commons - but she had begun to become complacent, particularly after keeping her seat last time around. She worked hard but like many MPs became far too routine in her duties and then had to deal with a partner living in Southampton, the cause of her potential downfall. This card brings stasis, a healing stand-off in which very little, positive or negative, happens. This breeds complacency and then arrogance, shown here.

Present - Temperance, reversed

A time in which this balance is disrupted and undermined because of external events and the revelations of problems in the system which has hitherto been churning away quite quietly in the background. The upset balance has led or is leading to resolution.

Rantzen currently - Justice

Rantzen feels she is an avenging angel, and this card hints that she is a real danger to Moran, who needs to be cut out of the body politic she has helped to damage. I feel a great sadness in this - not least because of the personal connection I have with her, above party politics - but it is having to deal with this cancer in general that is the greater good, and Rantzen is a means to this end in this area. I feel sorry for Moran, but justice must be done, and seen to be done.

Moran currently - Ace of Swords

The Ace is either doing, or being done to, and this is Moran being challenged on home turf by someone perhaps with an unfair advantage but with a genuine anger. Owlperson says that Rantzen is a catalyst, not a born winner, but he also says that the blow has to be hard and that my personal sadness for Moran is just that - personal, not political. Moran is held at swordpoint, and it is a decisive and destructive Ace that holds her now.

Future - VII Cups

The future is still invisible - we can see no further into this as there are still a lot of moves to be made before Rantzen and Moran face each other over the ballot box. Owlperson suggests we look at the results first for the people of Luton South, then for the election in general, then finally for Moran and Rantzen and how the story ends for them, since the future is hidden behind the veil of possibilities that may have to be left unanswered at this time.

Luton South - future representation in Parliament - IX Wands, reversed

The stockade falls down around Parliament, and Luton South, as a marginal, will follow the rest of the country in delivering its verdict. The protective wall has fallen and there is the sense of a rushing in - a dam breaks not only for Moran but also for Rantzen. Try as I might, I can't answer at this time whether we will see Esther Rantzen MP - Owlperson says she is not suited for parliament because of her lack of pragmatic thoughts in this particular campaign, but he also says her future is not for me to know or prejudice in any way, since the issue has a long time to roll yet. But it will still be relevant at the next election, because what is happening now will drive this surge of opinion against the current set-up - all of them except those who eventually oversee the transition period after this deadly battle.

The Election in general - V Pentacles, reversed

The upright Five here means disappointment or, more explicitly, not seeing the woods for the trees and missing what really matters in pursuit of an illusory goal. The Rider-Waite image is of a stained glass window giving the picture of another world of riches and splendour, though also carrying connotations of spiritual wealth, with the human figures common to all cards poor and desperate, looking everywhere but upwards to the light. In this sense, the reversed card suggests the scales fall from the impoverished people's eyes, and they finally see the glory they have been missing or have been searching for. Thus this coming election will really decide the future of the country, and will not be skewed in the direction of the people who have hitherto controlled the levers of power - and I do also mean the two-party, or two-leadership, duopoly of Brown and Cameron. They are desperately trying to prevent people looking upward, but Rantzen embodies the third way - if you will pardon the reference - even though I don't see her actually getting the benefit of this deal.

Margaret Moran in general - King of Pentacles, reversed

It is a shame that the King here is reversed and dethroned, because I do believe that Moran remains interested in her constituents and her unfortunate circumstances led to her being profligate with our money, rather than her spending it on feathering one's own (ducks') nest. She did work hard for her constituents in ways that they don't understand, and I see her heading for defeat anyway if she stands, though I am, as I said, not wholly convinced Rantzen will be the one who dethrones her.

Esther Rantzen in general - Knight of Pentacles, reversed

Rantzen is also hard at work - making she gets her own way - but the reversal here confims my belief she won't make it into Westminster (and who can say her own ambitions are spotless? isn't she just in it for herself as well?). The Knight has less control over events than the King, above, and although Esther has done things for people through her work for That's Life and Childline (as well as other media hobby-horses) she has not got the worthiness of Moran's own direction, and will just as soon be eaten by the mill she currently feeds. She isn't going to make it into Parliament, and although the future is still veiled, it is almost certain that this is not Tatton 1997, and also almost certain that this seismic change in politics will rival 1688 rather than being "1945 in spades", as 1997 was labelled by Jim Callaghan the morning after the night before. So no-one here will profit from it - but everyone will benefit.

David Cameron has pledged to reduce the power of Number 10, a Guardian article pledges today. He stops short of pledging proportional representation, which apparently (and I do agree with this) concentrates more power in political elites than in the hands of voters. particularly if lists of candidates are proposed (as in the European election system due to be used on 4 June) or electoral candidates directly voted for are "topped up" by the parties from pre-arranged lists according to

My old lecturer at the London School of Economics, Professor Brendan O'Leary (whose lectures were of course prefaced by "if you want more information on this subject, it's in my course textbook, you know, the one I wrote, available in all good academic bookshops priced £20") cited this example at the time at which Ron Davies was forced to stand down after the Clapham Common debacle, regarding the Welsh Assembly voting system. Members of the Assembly are elected in constituencies on an alternative-vote system (where the elector gets a second choice as well as a first; it is the system also used in the GLA elections, where I voted Labour first and second when Frank Dobson ran against Ken Livingstone in 2000), and "top-up" seats are allocated so the parties are represented broadly along the lines of proportionality. Alun Michael, proposed at the last minute as a leader for the Labour delegation to the Assembly*, would have to be shoehorned in to the top-up list. Brendan O'Leary confidently asserted that this ran the risk of Labour winning so much of the AV constituency vote that there was no room for any top-up candidates to be selected from their list, leaving Michael high and dry without a seat on the assembly. As it happened, Michael won his seat, only to be replaced by Morgan while I was in a beta-blocker induced haze and not watching politics after I stopped studying British politics after my first year at the School.

Cameron's proposals sound good on paper but I would rather let the tarot speak for me as I don't believe they are what the country needs right now (in terms of cleaning up the mess left by Hurricane Jacqui-Hazel) and I don't believe that he will be able to implement them because I don't think he is going to win the election on this ticket. If he wants to be just a figurehead that's fine by me (there are plenty of people I would rather actually ran the country; Foxy still has issues with the old Mary Jane and I'd rather he wasn't stoned when Obama comes asking him to press the button on Iranistan or somewhere like that) but I'm not going to vote for him anyway so I don't really care.

Situation in which Cambo finds himself today - The Fool, reversed

Cameron is looking dangerously like he is making things up as he goes along. The Fool does this well, upright, but reversed it begins to look as if these ideas came to him in a dream or a drug-induced haze; they are too insubstantial to hold his weight in government (or for him to be able to be trusted to enact) and they are being proposed at the expense of concentrating on the real issues behind the expenses scandal, or the real issues facing the country. Brown might look a bit pathetic when he tries to focus the debate back onto policy - he can't do that while the Torygraph is still bleeding my eyes with its crowing headlines - but Cameron cannot win an election without saying what he would do on health, education, the economy and so on, and yet he continues to bluff his way through with the tactic of the sorceror's apprentice - with predictable results predicted by this card.

Appearance of these proposals to the media - X Swords

This refers to the guillotine effect - the cutting off, brazenly, of government/prime ministerial power. But this is not a good card, and it brings with it not only the dramatic slicing off of someone's power, it also curtails the debate and is a card wielded against the querent, in this case David Cameron. Cameron looks like he is being tough, but this card suggests the media considers him now too bold, too dramatic, and too foolhardy to last the course of an election, even his snap poll that he so desperately wants.

Appearance of these proposals to the public - King of Swords, reversed

The King of Swords makes proposals everyone wants (even if he is not always in the position to do anything about it, and is consequently a card which accentuates the position of a good Leader of the Opposition) but this reversal suggests the public will not be satisfied with it and will continue to regard what is coming out of Westminster as a smokescreen. Cameron could probably do much more to clean out his Shadow Cabinet - Gove, Duncan, and now Hague with his party political spin expenses claim are under the finger of the press - but he has chosen to wildly churn out insubstantial ideas which in the long run will damage his claim to the throne even if they currently appear strong and masterful.

Internal appearance to the Conservative party - Ace of Wands, reversed

A tactic which is the exact opposite of what is really needed, and the party regards this as meddling rather than the brilliantly witty bon mot which Cambo hopes it might be. If Cameron had come out saying "Gove and Duncan will get the chop, I'm sacking Kirkbride and David Davis and anyone else who has had their fingers in the till illegitimately, including myself, and by the way I will pledge to raise spending on health and education year-on-year while pruning back other areas of spending which are superfluous to requirements (this, this, this, and this)", that would be the Ace of Wands upright. Sadly, anohter opportunity to regain standing missed on pointless procedural posturing.

Internal appearance to the Government - III Wands, reversed

The government cannot rest easily here either; it is impossible really for them to trump this and impossible for them to pull the debate back their way; this card upright is what happens when a comfort zone (the IV Wands) is broken and things begin to move forwards again; but reversed it means this movement is forcible and not in the querent's favour - the querent being the onlooking, lame duck (if you will pardon the dig yet again; ducks seem infused into our language, don't they?) government. The race is now to the bottom, and the government is playing catch-up with the only consolation being that Foxy is chasing his tail on this issue too. 

Roots of the situation - Judgement, reversed

The sad thing really is that here we have a delay in actual justice being imposed on this horrific rabble, not least on those who deserve it most. The more this is delayed, however, the greater it appears as a farce waiting for anarchy to engulf it. Cameron is playing for time and hoping to beat the clock to the finish; but the more he tries to evade punishment, the more it dangles over all of our heads in the form of sheer, destructive, political anarchy. There are lessons here from the days of Allende in Chile - if none of the current lot really understand what is coming, then the worse it will be when it gets here. Who is to be our Pinochet?

Seeds sown by the situation - IV Wands, reversed

Illusory structure, in that Westminster and the media not involved in printing the actual story, think that this crisis can be overcome with electoral or political reforms to power, competencies, role of MPs or the method of their selection. This is the comfort zone for them - because they know nothing else - but this comfort zone is breaking down into the situation required for, in other countries, a coup or the takeover of a junta. It happened in Chile, and it happened in Argentina, and it happened in many other countries who thought they had strong political systems, but were wrong. It could happen here if no-one addressed the real problems - and no-one can, since they would risk prison themselves.

Advice to Cameron - King of Wands, reversed

Slow down and think about this, Cambo. Don't try and hijack something for your own cause that makes you look good now but ignores the real issue. The King of Wands delights in being first to the story, using words to create structures, promising jam tomorrow rather than delivering it today. In that sense, the reversed card urges Cameron to think before he speaks, to think on the consistency and coherency of his message rather than rushing to print with his next big idea. It is his leadership writ large, and belies an insecurity that ultimately may prove his undoing.

Warning to Cameron - Knight of Cups, reversed

Again, the above card from a different angle. Cameron is drunk on his own success, and his flimsy ideas mirror David Davis' fit of pique last summer: trying to change government policy by the political equivalent of seppuku when the right thingss  to have done was, since the Conservatives opposed 42-day detention, to have worked with his own side to balance things once he became Home Secretary. He was the dashing Knight of Cups who kept appearing in spreads this time last year. This reversed card only intensifies that and makes this current over-reaction by Cameron seem overbalanced - work harder to get the substance right, and then people wouldn't be so disillusioned in general. Destroying systems because of bad people in charge will not do – people want the bad people prosecuted. Cameron is fiddling while Rome burns, and although the government is not doing that much either, politics is in meltdown and a simple cup of water will not put it out.

Direction for Cameron – The Hanged Man

The Hanged Man means, in a directional spread, that there is a need to take a step back and reassess the situation before plunging on. Cameron cannot really fix things until he is safely in government, and the powerful surge of anti-politics cannot be tamed by electoral reform or reducing the power of the Prime Minister – both non-sequiturs when the Chancellor of the Exchequer is charging his own tax returns to the Fees Office or someone is building a duck island in his personal lake and charging it to the public purse. This is not something that can be solved this way, and Cameron will take a step back and re-assess his own position – or, more likely, be forced to.

Direction for these proposals –Ace of Pentacles

The proposals themselves form the kernel of future reform anyway – Owlperson admits that he sees five-year fixed terms on the cards, a revamped expenses system which is much more stringent, a pay rise for MPs to allow them to do what they will with their own money (though not to the proposed £100,000, more like, he says, £80,000) and prime ministerial patronage reduced to the bare minimum, particularly in selecting those to go on to the Lords and those who join quangos and other bodies. He says Cameron will not be implementing them, because if he got to government he would ignore most of what he has said, either in the face of pragmatism imposed on him by the civil service (which Owlperson says makes it difficult for ideologues to get their hands any nearer power than, say, Neil Kinnock did) or because his own indulgent behaviour behind the scenes makes it unlikely that once in government he will oblige anyone who voted for him on the strength of these proposals. The next PM – and the winner of the next election – will be a former cabinet minister who, unlike Foxy or his “near ancestor” Blair, knows what it takes to balance the needs of government with the need to embrace public opinion. The tide will turn against Foxy, but not all of what he says need be discounted. Owlperson also notes that the defenestration of the Tory backbenchers in question – the Wintertons particularly – will make it much easier for the next Tory leader to control his party, and urges caution in saying that all Foxy’s new candidates would form a Cameron’s Comrades situation after the next election.

Solution – The Devil, reversed

The depth of the disfigurement of Parliament is now such that Ewan MacColl’s “Dirty Old Town” comes to mind:

I’m going to make a good sharp axe

Shining steel, tempered in the fire

We’ll cut you down, like an old dead tree

Dirty old town, dirty old town

The tree, Owlperson says, like much symbolism that appears in songs he considers prophetic of the end of the world, is pertinent here as well. This card therefore points to renewal through utter pain, which cannot be reversed simply by words.

Trend on the whole issue – Page of Pentacles, reversed

Those who are trying to fix this have as much hold on the issue as someone trying to nail the proverbial jelly to the ceiling. Instead of sowing the seeds of reform, they are (like Alan Shearer’s desperate attempts to keep Newcastle from relegation which, predictably, ended in failure over the weekend with a risible own goal by the aptly named Damien Duff) mismanaging decline and trying too late in the day to stop the ship from capsizing. Instead of the steady and strong King steering the ship of state, the current rabble – on both sides – are, again like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice that this card represents in its reversed aspect, involved in the chaos and cannot be relied upon to put it right to everyone’s satisfaction.

Outcome – Eight of Swords

This card represents, ironically, being trapped and although the bonds are loose and the gate open, no-one can see the way out. The Rider-Waite image is of a princess trapped in a circle of swords, hands tied and blindfolded, but waiting serenely there for her knight in shining armour. This image summarises our political class quite nicely – they are waiting for something which, when it comes, will burn her at the stake. And she is still waiting and hoping for it to go away. Poor her. Not.

-------------------------------

*(and subsequently deposed by the real leader of Wales, Rhodri Morgan, who has by rights done a superb job and proved, like Ken Livingstone, that the Blairite machine generally knew sod-all about who their electorates would accept, forcing Livingstone's grudging reacceptance into the Labour Party once it became clear that the Tories had a chance and an official Labour candidate in 2004 would dangerously split the vote)

Today's card is another bad one, after yesterday's moderately productive omen.

IX Swords

The Nine of Swords indicates that another torrid day is in store for the establishment (a whole panoply of sorry excuses for till-dipping comes out on the Torygraph front page, fingering two past Tory leaders for putting spin on exes, for example, and yet more on Julie "One down, one to go" Kirkbride; to be fair to Labour, more tax advice has been funnelled through the Fees Office, thanks to Meg Munn). The scandal is already claiming innocent victims - Laura Moffat, cited by this blog as being an example of a good, conscientious MP sitting on a slim majority but doing everything she possibly can to hold her own, is in hospital recovering from a haemmorhage. We wish her a speedy recovery, though under this card recovery is slow and painful .

So another day with intensifying pressure but no sign of actual release as, as I related earlier, everybody and his duck tries to pass the responsibility for this on to the electoral system rather than calling the Old Bill in.

It can go on as long as it likes, as far as I'm concerned - there will be a holocaust at some point, since no-one is actually addressing the real issues, and this card suggests that destructive influences, at least today, will claim another couple of scalps, though whether they are the right ones or not, will be up to the people concerned.

And the duck must stop with Brown and Cameron. Now.

(Question: Is Viggers a duck totem? Answer, yes. That's why he went quackers when the ducks didn't like it.)

...or is it just a way for the politicians in charge to dodge the issue?

PR will not clean out the government, and Foxy's ideas - fixed term parliaments, taking the date of an election away from the PM, are long overdue - won't stop MPs pinching from the till.

It's like the following scenario: I was at work on Saturday supervising a new employee who gave me a much-needed respite from the job, which normally sees me behind a till for 12 hours. The new girl is mouse totem, usually mice-people do well in shops as most coffee bars and restaurants employ them; they are conscientious, bright and happy people, with smart personal grooming and inquisitive and imaginative ideas (Sarah Teather and Jo Swinson are both mice, and mice tend towards the Liberal Democrat end of politics as they are air-earth elementals - rooted in the country, so they look after their constituents well, but whose ideals often come before practicalities like government pragmatism). She was not the sharpest tool in the book; mice are not often academics, and do often go on appearances rather than deep realities (all totems, as you know, have their upsides and downsides).

Mouse-girl - let's call her Angelina Ballerina - had a £35.50 till deficit when it came to cash up. I'm not accusing her of thieving - it's really hard ever to get a till spot on to balance. Within a pound is fine - but not £35.50 out. The proprietor goes ballistic if the deficit is more than about £5, and mine usually come within a pound, particularly when on Saturday and Sunday I do the whole day. But £35.50 is straying, in newsagent terms, into duck-island territory. The poor girl was obviously at a loss as to what had happened, but instead of saying straight up, "OK, what do you think has happened, and what should I do better next time?" she started to rant at me, saying she'd only had a 60p bottle of water (which she had rung through the till and not put the money in - a surprisingly rare case in which a mistake can be made, since most transactions by a good assistant are made without particular error; my feeling is that most errors come from mistakes in counting and balancing the float rather than mistakes in input and output through the till when a transaction is made*) --- fine, ok, so the till should be 60p short then --- and then the poor girl started saying, "but I only sold ice-creams, it was really slow, someone came in for a paper"...OK, again, fine, but according to the receipt she sold £90 worth of ice-creams etc. since I left her, and there was only £55 in the till after float.

She then declared that she was late and her dad was waiting for her outside, and could she go because it was after 7 and she was only supposed to work from 2 to 7. The problems with the till had taken up longer than normal, yes, but I still hadn't shown her how to shut the shop and lock the doors (which key goes where, which, judging her intelligence, would have been a reasonably dificult job; mind you, I have worked there five months and have only just got it fully learned), and so on - which, if she ever comes back after that, she will be doing on her own next time.

So little Angelina Ballerina was trying to blame everything on the fact that she only sold a certain type of good, rather than that she had either been dipping in herself (not likely) or making a gross amount of mistakes. This situation reminds me of the political arena at the moment, desperately trying to appease the public by deflecting the issue onto electoral reform, while not admitting that the party leaders themselves have bills wrongly claimed for expenses which haven't really been incurred as part of their duties.

As above, so below. 

The only plus is that Alan Johnson, everyone's preferred Labour leader (though not mine and not Owlperson's, who says he has a cat in hell's chance), is clean. The minus on this is that he is joining in the general obfuscation, as yet more revelations continue to stream out of Torygraph Towers. (Link only goes to the newspaper front page today - I can't be bovvered to link to each one...)

This only makes it easier to get rid of the lot of them anyway :).

*if I want something from the shop and don't have the cash on me, I note down what I've spent and put the whole bill through the till at the end.

Today's card is the Knight of Pentacles, which suggests to me that the situation is turning from a list of scandals in the direction of more solid and concrete action, though still both parties have not got much control over what they can do and what they do do.

All kinds of bandwagons are trying to hitch a ride here, with the PR (proportional representation) lobby in full swing, despite the fact that this is not votes MPs have been swindling from us (ok, that's for later, says Owlperson mysteriously) but money. I suspect if the House of Commons was elected by AV+ (don't ask, it's a long story) then Nick and Ann Winterton, Shahid Malik, Julie Kirkbride, Andrew Mackay, and all the rest of the duck-fanciers, moat-dredgers and capital-gains-tax-evaders (not so colourful that one, is it?! hmmmm...) would still have had their hands in the till. And they'd still be next in line for Madame Guillotine, aka the next election.

In further news - still dripping out - Nicholas and Ann Winterton will stand down at the next election from their respective constituencies. Not surprisingly, they had their hands in the till. But they, like Ian McCartney (Owlperson is saddened by his exit, stage left, but still...all must be judged the same), are claiming health reasons and not due to scandal, presumably jumping before they were pushed.

I look forward to reporting more of these sudden decisions on the state of health (and not, say, wealth), perhaps sooner or later from Dorries and Kirkbride, and a couple of Labour MPs too to even things up a bit.

Apparently he claimed accountancy fees on expenses.

You just really couldn't make it up. He's the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and before that Chief Secretary to the Treasury. I know and understand you need help from accountants for auditing one's exp...sorry, tax returns, but to be honest, it's just getting ridiculous now - and very, very dangerous. The Magician, reversed suggests Darling can no longer be seen as a whizz with numbers, he can no longer hold authority as Chancellor, and his potency - if it was ever there in the first place - is running out.

No wonder the writers of Blackadder Goes Forth gave Tim McInnerney's character the name Captain Darling - their crystal ball must have been as good as mine is (hmmmmmmm...but never mind).

Out the window with him.

First a note of congratulations, I thought this deserved a post of its ow, untainted by the comic annals of our hardworking and upstanding (or not, as the case may be) Members of Parliament.

My sister, Jillian, has got engaged to her boyfriend Mark Addison. They are currently in Aberdeen, where Mark works (my sister still lives down here in Reading, working at Shiplake College near Henley) but I wish them all the best .

The future Mrs Addison may, if Owlperson is to be believed, be joined by a second Mrs ... Whoever ... sooner rather than later but he is just a spirit owl giving me reassurance that my own nuptuals are not far off. Since I don't even have a boyfriend, I'm intrigued, but Owlie assures me I already know the lucky man, so I'm waiting to be presently surprised.

Vulpes Vulpes' fat, smug face gazes out of a Times article suggesting the Conservative candidate list will be opened to "independent" candidates, going beyond the approved lists and welcome to anyone who is interested in public service. "Jumping the shark" refers to a series which, like when Happy Days showed an episode that featured The Fonz jumping over a shark, is widely held to have run out of serious, coherent ideas and is twisting in the wind after elusive excitement. Has David Cameron finally found a gimmick that can't save his foxy little hide from mounting wisteria-clearance bills?

Since the Tories have made it clear they have about as much time for ordinary public servants as they do for bubonic plague, that should send a steady stream of people in to local Conservative associations - or not, as the case may be. This sounds good, but it's just another gimmick from someone whose idea of government and whose conception of what the public purse should be used for.

I'm not a fan of public primaries for the reason they are open merely to more self-selecting activists than genuine local people, and self-selecting activists from other parties as well as your own. This to me suggests that Foxy has no confidence in the massed ranks of the Conservative Party, and will probably upset people who have worked hard in the party grassroots and thus earned the right to stand for parliament in a safe seat. They are suddenly bypassed by someone who has no party experience, no previous interest in politics, no understanding of the system but is "untainted" by political activism. (Cue no doubt lots of overtures to various celebrities who have been making a nuisance of themselves for the past few weeks.)

It is not the candidates' list who are tainted by sleaze, Foxy-friend.

Anyway, reading for this as this takes us into uncharted territory - forget the allegations still pouring out of Telegraph towers, this is where things get interesting for reform and/or the future anarchy which is scheduled for round-a-bout now.

Situation - The Fool, reversed

There is the need to make more and more striking pronouncements in order to trump the last one - never mind whether they are workable, sane, or even going to be popular with the people who have worked hard for Foxy over the last few years. This shakes the situation up again, and puts not only the party in danger of being used as a testing ground for a mad sorceror's apprentice, but also makes the long-term stability of politics at risk from someone whose mind doesn't stay made up for more than about two months. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Appearance to public - Ace of Cups

It does hand Foxy a means of making overtures to people he otherwise wouldn't get on side. It allows him to stay ahead of the agenda, despite his own mea culpa. It also offers people some semblance of policy and action to replace the lack of solid coherence to his plans for government, which he will need fairly soon if he wants a snap election. It's a start, but is it solid enough for people to actually know who or what they are voting for.

Appearance to press - Death

It is a point at which the Fokssss does jump the shark, and although it moves the story on, it moves it on in a way which is dangerous for the situation and likely to inflame opinion rather than quench the current thirst for vengeance against a rotten system of which Cameron is a part. It doesn't give them what they want - it just gives us a new breed of politician when we need more character and backbone. Not a good omen for someone needing consistency, constancy and upwards motion - the end is not needed now, but in a year's time when I still expect an election to be held.

Reasons for this move - Cameron - V Swords, reversed

Cameron needs to find a silver bullet to destroy Labour and give him the ability to serve himself from the real public pie, government. He is trying harder and harder to show that he is trying to kickstart a revolution - or coup - in his favour. He is still searching within himself to come up with something solid and appealing to the general public, and he knows he is running out of time to do so. It appears over to him, and he is throwing the dice trying to come up with something solid which avoids actual policies.

Responses internally - the Conservative Party - III Cups

There is a kind of internal support for this move, the effervescence and excitement in this card may well prove the idea to have some currency within; it is, on the face of it, a reasonable idea to stimulate their membership and interest in politics from quarters in which there is little attachment to the system. It increases the party's pulling power and may well be welcomed (all the deposed MPs still sound like self-critical victims of Stalinist show-trials...when that starts to change it will get dangerous) but in the euphoria of the current situation still lies a deadly public reaction that puts the Tories - and anyone standing under their name - still in the line of fire.

Roots of the idea - VII Cups, reversed

Illusions as to what the public really want and mean and illusory ideas to try and grab hold of the reins of power. This deepening of the upright card suggests that these illusions are beginning to be dangerous fantasies - the Conservative Party is tainted too by the scandal, and can we really trust poachers to make up laws on gamekeeping?

Seeds of the idea - The World, reversed

It won't work and may well drag Foxy down - the upright World means success, glory and apostheosis; the reverse suggests a stagnation and delay in this process, or a corruption of the necessary catalyst for monumental, wholescale reform and an evaporation of momentum towards this end. The Tories hope the mood can be channelled into a self-serving end - but they will not be able to do this while their party leader still has outstanding unethical claims. It also suggests here that apostheosis goes against them, not towards them as they hope.

Advice to Cameron - The Star, reversed

Ever hopeful of saying something that I might just like, Foxy proposes this at a time where the problem lies not with the candidates to Parliament but with the people within Parliament. Although Cameron evidently expects a mass cull, he is purely interested in establishing his own power base rather than the good of the country, and this reversed Star suggests to me he is walking down a dangerous road - he is seen as an arch-politician, not a good governor of the country. He is running out of time to restore genuine hope and balance to politics, and these quick fixes might work at the time, but will not be enough to give genuine assistance to his party at the election.

Advice to Tories - The Magician

The party itself needs to be more imaginative in itself, and not rely on dumping a long list of good and bad MPs (Owlperson knows where Michael Howard's body is buried, for example) for new converts to the Cameroon Tories who owe nothing to any sense of commitment to the party as a whole. The party needs to be lighter on its feet and more responsive to public opinion, which in my experience is lukewarm at best towards Cameron rather than the Conservative Party. It needs to defenestrate everyone who has made an unethical claim - and its leader is among that category. It needs to strike with the agility and public backing that Cameron has assumed he's had over the past few weeks and tell him what people really think about him. 

Warning to Cameron - VI Pentacles, reversed

This move brings no substance, merely changes in personnel, and as such does not make many moves towards a genuine programme of political reform. He needs to put those principles forward, and bring substance to the situation, or risk this not being enough to convince people that politicians really have the answers that a good, old-fashioned military coup would not solve. The situation is close to that of Latin America in the 1970s, and although there is no obvious mover who would be able to take power, public thirst will not be quenched with mere window-dressing like this. We need policy, not politics, and a defined reformist agenda. In seeking to cut corners, solid goodwill is leaking away.

Warning to Tories - The Lovers

There is a decision the party needs to make to put it back where, arguably, it believes it belongs - in power. It needs to realise that its own robustness is an asset, not a curse - and it needs to assert itself and hold Cameron to account for what he is doing in parliament. I am no supporter of Mackay or Viggers or Hogg or those who have been made to step down. But it needs to assess this with a power to make its own mind up or have Cameron foist more time-servers in his own image upon them and not actually get to grips with the core problem - the long-term view of politics and politicians. It needs to step back from Cameron and make its own decision on this, like it rejected Howard's plans to curtail the leadership vote. At least Howard consulted the party, is all I can say to this.

Direction for Cameron - VIII Cups

Cameron needs now to see that the cup of goodwill towards politicians in general is running dry and he needs to move on onto something that will genuinely capture the popular imagination in terms of what is going to happen after he takes office, rather than trying to milk an increasingly febrile public mood in the hopes of a huge landslide, so he can milk the proceeds of government as well. He needs to realise that this is mere spin - what will count now more than ever before is substance.

Direction for Tories - King of Wands, reversed

The King of Wands is now Cameron, making decisions on the hoof and taking praise for them on the ad hoc in which he has run the party for the last three and a half years. He needs to calm down or these emergency measures will force a backlash in a party which is being taken for granted to ensure that one man profits from this. Michael Gove and Alan Duncan have dipped into the public purse for more than just moats or duck islands, and they need to go - the party needs to force him to wipe the slate genuinely clean, not to reward his friends and sack inconvenient bedblockers. The party becomes a bucking bronco, throwing off its wastrel Shadow Cabinet, who currently believe they are immune to public wrath. Wrong on all counts.

Solution for Cameron - The Chariot, reversed

Cameron becomes shriller and shriller and is going so fast he may come off the rails when it is obvious he can do nothing to solve or soothe public anger. He has solved nothing, and is too big on the spin ideas rather than the policy substance that would restore confidence in both parties. Labour are apparently doomed, but the devil in the detail means that blundering forward and working largely off-the-cuff may destabilise things more rather than increase the possibilities of Cameron taking office as PM.

Solution for Tories - Ace of Wands

A strike at the heart of power here for the Tories - a decision which will decide things once and for all. This is a significant improvement on the Three and Two of Wands - which symbolise activity, but not a decisive action - which have been coming up of late. The definite blow is struck here which will bring things to a head, and either destroy them or reignite momentum which has been lacking as a result of this crisis and even beforehand.

Outcome - VII Wands, reversed

The trend here is now towards sinking rather than swimming. A need for definite purpose is answered with gimmickry and flimsy, silly ideas that do not address the problems. The answer is always "not today, sorry" - but can't be for too long before it turns ugly.

Volpessa, by the way, is my own name for a female fokssss.

Nadine "Little" Dorries' blog has been shut down, the Guardian reports, not by the Conservative Party but by lawyers acting for the Telegraph.

Another one for the immediate chop too, I hope, along with La Kirkbride-Mackay.

The Tories are finally getting tough but this is just the tip of the degenerate iceberg from both parties and we here do await what Harriet Harman called a considered process to see which Labour MPs follow their Tory colleagues into the dustbin of history. Feeling I worked hard for these people is countered by the fact that the two MPs I worked hardest for (Rob Wilson and Richard Benyon, see passim) are - so far - clear of any unethical claims, but I wonder how far into this morass we will have to go before we find out how much people have been scammed in terms of votes as well as public money. For this issue I get the Knight of Swords, reversed - gently does it, don't get ahead of yourself, Louise, and allow this particular story to blow itself out before the real hurricane begins, as a result of all parliamentary and political systems being scrutinised.

...and in other stories, Bernard Jenkin, Paul Goggins and Caroline Flint's attempt to salvage Hazel Blears for posterity's sake.

Andrew is a local MP - I've written about him passim so no poison pen letter today - but John Redwood is in the Wokingham Times over £3,000 worth of redecorating that was claimed for twice - and repaid at the time. Not going to get savage with Redders, he is someone who has helped me in the past get a foot on the next rung of parliamentary life, but for him the X Pentacles, reversed suggests that this could be damaging to him in the future as well as having damaged him now and, financially at least, in the past. I had thought that local MPs - with the exception of Mackay in Bracknell - were squeaky clean but the ooze is spreading :(, with James Arbuthnot in trouble in North Hampshire and Michael Ancram the next-but-one westward (after Richard Benyon in Newbury, who is so posh he doesn't need expenses, though I haven't heard anything and am awaiting with trepidation, again because I owe him a lot - and he me - from 2005) is deep in trouble. I find myself in difficulty as a lot of local MPs - and no doubt a lot of MPs in general - are decent people but the problem is that (a) the local miscreants are all bar none Tory, and for me wanting a reason to vote for them that's a big problem, and (b) although I still feel I would like a Westminster career - and Owlperson repeatedly tells me its on my cards, so to speak (King of Swords, reversed - I am not at the moment able to make that decision and not at the moment able to fulfil even my journalistic potential, but there is potential at least there) - I am more and more at a loss what to predict as the outcome of this scandal and whether or not the Tory/Labour divide will still exist in its current form afterwards.

On the other hand, Owlperson says and says again he has told me that although it changes and evolves, the political structure itself is salvageable, that unexpected people will rise to the challenge of repairing it (there will be a little bit of "back to the future" involved) and that although current personnel are heading for a mass cull, the party system will survive intact and that the Indepedents' campaign (IX Swords) is doomed to failure because people feel they still need a coherent party system and that all it must involve is a judgement on the people making the headlines, not the basic structure to our democracy.

Meanwhile, in other news, Rowan Williams is under fire from his fellow churchmen. Again, a fulfilment of the Nine of Swords which I pulled last night for Rowan, and perhaps a warning to him that he has once again misjudged the public - and ecclesiastic - mood.

Jonathan Djanogly is in trouble over some £5,000 automatic gates.

Andrew Mackay is facing reselection and (included in the same link) Totnes Conservative Association is distancing itself from Anthony Steen's crass comments.

The dam, in other words, continues to break. For this set of titbits, I get the VII Pentacles - building, growing and coming to fruition is a constructive solution to all of this. One can hope that that involves destruction as well, but I get the feeling it does. For the party as a whole the IX Cups comes up - satiety and glorious abundance, or, in other words, a chance to control their own destinies and solve this problem, though again, I do feel that this will have to involve at some stage some action by the leadership to get to grips with more than a cursory voluntary defenestration and show some real backbone in sackings and suspensions.

For tomorrow, when I am out all day at work (my shift is 7am to 7pm), the Card of the Day is:

King of Pentacles - some coherent and productive action shown from quarters which show that someone, somewhere in the establishment is taking this thing seriously.

EDIT - just found this on Digg. Hilarious beyond belief. Don't read if you are in anyway offended by bad language, but it just sums up people's opinions loud and clear and shows why neither the Tories nor Labour get why people are so upset with them. 

Anthony Steen, he of the tree surgeon’s bills, has said voters are just jealous. Nadine Dorries complains about a witch-hunt. The party leaders are struggling to distance themselves from the issues and Rowan Williams is telling the public to stop humiliating MPs – in the name of democracy itself. So what is actually going to be the result of this? The momentum does not seem to be subsiding, and the scandal is the only real show in town, with no-one really interested in the side dishes of Europe (even in the face of impending European elections, though I don’t think David Cameron can breathe a sigh of relief quite yet over his decision to leave the EPP and the Treaty of Lisbon being sidelined in the face of the biggest onslaught of parliamentary sleaze Britain has seen since 1688 – Owlperson chillingly says, that’s for next week...) and Royal Mail privatisation. It needs to be read for at this stage since I think things are only just beginning, two weeks after the first revelations were made public (and Owlperson said to me, Louise...I don’t think you want to watch the news tonight...).

Without much further ado, let us read for the further progression and ins and outs of this scandal and its potential consequences. The Speaker has gone – but will the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition be next? Cameron is already sailing into dangerous waters by propping up Bill Wiggin, and desperate “reshuffilitis” ((c) Andrew Grice, the Independent) is breaking out with Hazel Blears looking precarious, but not yet gone, and Jacqui Smith, the first cuckoo of spring, probably for the chop.

I am using a deck without occult imagery – the Angel Tarot, which is largely done with the style of ordinary playing cards – so that I can remove the tedious typing of meanings and work freeform for a while. It is always nice to rely on a printed meaning, but sometimes it can be restrictive for relying on one’s own sixth senses.

Situation – X Pentacles, reversed

The situation is damaging to the internal structure and is not just one’s average sleaze scandal where the perpetrator can be sacked and the status quo continue. This is the wholesale abuse of power that has overturned the government’s ability to rule the country and the Opposition’s ability to hold the executive to account. Alexander Chancellor in today’s Guardian complains that 9/11 was much more deserving of such long and thorough coverage, but he misses the point – this is the British version of 9/11 – just as unforeseeable, just as deadly to the status quo and just as likely to prove a point of no return than just remain a simple problem with Jacqui Smith’s bath plugs.

Appearance to the public as of 22 May 2009 – Ace of Pentacles, reversed

A gift, but a deadly gift. The public exposure has given people back control of their democracy, but potentially at the cost of effective government over the summer at least and possibly political sclerosis while the situation is resolved. Although the legislature would not be sitting over the summer months anyway, the chaos threatens to deprive us of the control needed on public officials and private servants – from ministers, if not MPs – and this damage could lead to virtual anarchy unless order is imposed. The public know that damage has been done, but are beginning also to realise that anarchy will now reign until there can be a direct and concrete resolution. They will not be pacified by reshuffles – rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic for both parties – and will only be satisfied with wholesale change.

Appearance to the Labour party leadership – X Swords, reversed

Actually, it may have stopped the moves against Gordon Brown proposed only two or three weeks ago because of mounting concern that he was not up to the job. It stopped the process for Alan Johnson in its tracks and perhaps handed Brown more latitude to get tough. It might have prevented a bloodbath even after the European Elections because no potential leadership challenger has emerged as a complete saint from this. Anyone taking over would have to be completely clean to stand a chance. I also think that even if Labour are scattered to the four winds at the European elections – and the Salford by-election suggests perhaps not, or at least that this heavy defeat will drag the Tories down with them – Brown stands a chance of limping towards the next election with at least his office intact, even if he is not actually able to command the same authority as he was during the winter.

Appearance to the Tory leadership – III Pentacles, reversed

A lot has been said about how this had wrecked Cameron’s attempts to modernise the Conservative Party and its image (though in my opinion that began a long time before he became leader: university students were joining the party in increasing numbers since just after the 2001 election, according to Owlperson – and his Bullingdon Club photographs and Etonian origins belied that anyway). In that sense, yes it has, but it has also damaged the party at just the time when it was beginning to construct (but only just beginning) its manifesto for the next election. Never robust, this has been the most damaging time for Cameron’s “project” as a whole, because there is not much more time to rebuild the platform. In my mind’s eye I could always see a house being built, as in the biblical parable, on the sandy shore rather than on the rocky hinterland; it took this scandal to wash away the flimsy Cameroon programme where something much more solid much earlier on might at least have saved the Tories from total oblivion and embarrassment by Anthony Steen’s ludicrous comments and Cameron’s desperate attempt to shore up Bill Wiggin.

Appearance to the Labour backbenches – The Moon, reversed

The Moon in itself is a card which hides the truth of a situation behind opacity and cryptic clues. Working through this card can take precious time itself; Labour backbenchers therefore may find that they are unable to agree on what seems right to do and do not have enough information at their fingertips to make a coherent judgements. Upright the Moon can suggest the querent knows what to do intuitively; here however it is only sheer luck which might assist the Labour backbenches stave off defeat and collapse because they have no real compass to guide them except for a morass of conflicting advice and evidence of the public’s mood. The Salford local by-election was fought on issues closer to the ground – and they still won it even two weeks in to the apparent political apocalypse Westminster is facing – but Labour will just need to wander for the moment before the direction in which they are going becomes clear.

Appearance to the Tory backbenches – IX Cups, reversed

The Nine of Cups reversed is drunkenness, excess and a hangover – the party is over for the Tories as well as Labour. Although Cameron is not directly in the line of fire, this is, of course, the point at which last time the Tories began to doubt victory under Howard and come badly off the rails as a result. Howard never regained the absolute support and conviction of his parliamentary colleagues, and they decided that another term was necessary to prime the party for resurgence. But Cameron has failed to overcome this hurdle as well, and in a more spectacular way than his predecessor failed because there is much more at stake. The mood in the party may not revive and however much Cameron tries to prevent his own record being called into question, going forward, the election is no longer looking such a certainty.

Appearance to the guilty parties (of all stripes and none) – King of Pentacles, reversed

The party is definitely over and the ability to scam and manipulate the public purse ended. Some have responded with the appropriate mea culpa and quit. Some, like Steen and Dorries, have not gone so quietly. But the important thing here is that the misuse of money was cardinal – it was driving the system forward. The King of Pentacles is one of the most powerful court cards because he has control of his suit and his suit is that of the material, substantial Pentacles or Coins – earth. They were playing with real money, and they got shafted. This shows the collapse of the means, in other words, of pursuing the goals that have usurped proper governance, opposition, and participation in the democracy they were elected to serve. Guilty as charged, and in a very dangerous spot.

Roots of the situation on 22 May 2009 – VIII Pentacles, reversed

This was the momentum and constructive elements of this card working to undo what was being done and making a coherent start into cleaning the situation up. Michael Martin has already become the first casualty of the undoing of the Mother of Parliaments in the mother of all sleaze scandals, and more and more hitherto unblemished careers are being ruined. Nadine Dorries, for example, with her arrogance and her dubious involvement in Smeargate, is now probably too toxic for Cameron – if it is he who forms the next government at all – to consider for his ministerial team. Owlperson, who has been watching her since her election in 2005, says that he is sorry she has been tainted in this way as she would have made a good minister for any leadership, and perhaps might have got to the cabinet. The deconstructing of careers is in full swing and has led us to the important phase – the aftermath of the revelations.

Seeds sown by the situation – II Wands, reversed

The situation begins to boil down to a climax, and intensification is matched by the kind of foot-dragging that just generates frustration, exasperation and climax. The party leaders are responding with the kind of crass partisanship, resignation (though not yet quite literally) and a scramble to defend people they are close to while throwing others to the hungry wolves of Fleet Street. It should not be dependent on who was at school with who – all the guilty need to be punished, but this may only happen when the party leaders are forced into it rather than happening as a natural process of catharsis.

Advice to Brown – IX Pentacles, reversed

Brown should seek consensus immediately since he no longer enjoys the ability to be safe within himself. His rather chequered premiership has surprised me at times – he appeared to do countless Houdini acts over the winter – conference, Glenrothes, the PBR – and he appeared to have regained control until the turmoil of this spring emerged to almost fatally damage him. He did, however, during much of 2008, still smile unnervingly – most notably when he was greeting the triumphant Olympic athletes home from Beijing – which suggested me that he was behaving as in the upright Nine of Pentacles: alone, but secure within because he knew his enemies were more inept than he was (most notably David Miliband’s ill-timed declaration of his Cabinet team before there was even a vacancy for leader, which in my opinion cost him the top job – oh yes, that and the bananas). Now he needs to understand the days of being able to retreat within himself are over and that if he wants to keep both his leadership of the Labour Party and his occupancy of Number 10, he needs to reach out and become the charismatic demagogue his predecessor was.

Advice to Cameron – Knight of Pentacles, reversed

Tricky as advice, but reaching into the meaning of the upright card, and the element of Pentacles (that of material substance), Cameron needs to act as the Knight and be able to move the discussion on to definite ways and means of governing if he really is ready for the election he desires. As he is now, with the reversed Knight in his cards, not only can he not aspire to the pro-active King or even the responsive Queen, but he cannot fulfil what the Tories need to fight an election so soon after this maelstrom has done its worst. He should put on the brakes on calling for a general poll – though we all know he won’t – and he should try to put together what manifesto he can to try and convince the public – and even The Sun itself, with whom he united in his call for an early election – that he is ready to govern in reality as well as in his personal PR. The reversal means simply that this is not possible given the position or mindset he is in.

Warning to Brown – IV Wands, reversed

Structure is beginning to break down. Brown can no longer govern with this scandal out in the open; the government is descending into anarchy and at risk of taking the country with it. The IV denotes a tenuous structure at best – it would be better to see Pentacles as signifying real grounding and strength, and the Wands as temporary, shifting but internally consistent bringers of balance (as in the difference between a brick house and a canvas tent). So what little balance and harmony there was for the Prime Minister before this episode, there is now very little of that left and what’s more, it threatens to bring down the whole legislature and executive rather than just a couple of convenient scapegoats.

Warning to Cameron – III Wands, reversed

Patience is rapidly running out in some quarters, and while some people in the press try and claim Cameron’s leadership was better than Brown’s in the initial phases of this scandal, there needs to be a lot more done now than protecting his Shadow Cabinet and hoping the people will swallow Tory propaganda about needing a new culture. The rot has set in and as the country and its government moves away from the precious stability that has long been a comforting feature of the Westminster system, so the Opposition is on more and more dangerous ground that could, if Cameron is not careful, turn into quicksand for him as well as Brown. The public – as far as I can see on the blogosphere at least – is calling for an election, but it has a unique opportunity also to call for someone other than the current tainted leaderships. Cameron may have gotten away with platitudes and humbug in the security that he was not the leader of the Labour Party for so long, but now cannot rely on that because of the damage to his party too. He has a few weeks to convince the electorate that he can rise above this, but unfortunately was never aware, during the good times, how much he had to do to lay in stores for the bad times. Now they are upon him, the ground is shifting too dangerously to do anything about that.

Direction for Labour – II Cups

This could be good for Labour – it means a re-connection with their electorate and a re-connection with the party who were sidelined too long. It seems that after a long string of negative issues, this card at least gives some hope that the damage may not in their case be absolutely terminal – relative to the above warnings, at least. There is still the connection there, as we saw in Salford, so the first thing for Labour to do is to jettison those who have broken the rules and shattered moral standards – even if it takes half their parliamentary party away – and then go to the country while the Tories still lag behind in policy terms. But I don’t feel this is what will ultimately happen as I don’t feel confident that this connection will be enough in the long run to save the system from going under. I think it’s only a short term way of shoring up the vote and the inability of Westminster to govern effectively with a lot of its membership under a cloud will ultimately dwarf any attempt to re-orientate a discredited parliament.

Direction for the Tories – Temperance, reversed

This is more destabilising in the short term for the Tories as they have a lot more to lose than Labour – no less than their credibility as a possible alternative and the possibility of the fragmenting of the opposition to Labour just when they were beginning to gather together support which in 2005 was stolen by UKIP, Veritas, the BNP and, oh yes, the Liberal Democrats under Charles Kennedy. If Cameron cannot make sizeable gains on June 4 then the party may go backwards into its pre-2005 funk rather than forwards into government. And, as so often with the Tories, it will be the leader that gets the blame, not the unruly and mulish backbenches or grassroots.

Direction for the Liberals – Judgement, reversed

The Liberal Democrats would like to gain from this as they did from Howard’s dithering in 2004 but they find themselves this time round on the wrong side of the fence – the scandal has claimed those previously felt to be upright and upstanding members such as Menzies Campbell and Lembit Opik. Owlperson predicted Campbell’s downfall  the summer before it happened and told me he wouldn’t survive to the new era he’s been on about for a long time. (Lembit survives, to the delight of all ufologists and Estonians out there.) This is really that the LibDems, with their own problems, cannot reap this political whirlwind and are as in need of a clearout as the big two are.

Solution for all – VIII Swords

There is no way out of this. Even though the allegations may subside – though not yet I feel – Westminster is utterly trapped until it deals with this, and the public will not be fobbed off with a promise of reform or reconstruction – it will cause the actual downfall and/or arrest of other senior figures before too long. The energies are trapped and the actual bomb has not yet gone off.

Outcome for 23-30 May – Page of Wands

There is no recess from this scandal; there are only for now attempts to deflect or manipulate it further and further, which will have the knock on effect of exacerbating it. The Page of Wands is playing with matches – there is here a sense of trying too hard to get over this issue and failing, because the people involved are too inept to deal with it themselves. It is far too far outside the realms of normal business that it resembles 9/11 in its scale and effect – and combined with other issues, which the Government is gamely  trying to deal with too, it will ignite more fires rather than put them out. Recess is not an effective firebreak when the people concerned insist on using barbeques in a shed full of gunpowder.

Outcome for the European elections – II Pentacles

The shift in emphasis begins away from the money side of things to deeper and more direct issues, and since the design on this card resembles a tape winding on, there are still ways to keep this going and perhaps solidify and substantiate the effect into a genuine process of reform as well as keeping the destructive mood of the public still in political consciousness. We cannot go back – we can only go forward.

Outcome for the General Election – V Swords

The defeat of the old order and the beginning of the new. This does not bode well for either party – it suggests that before we can go forward to any new Parliament, we need to stop this one in its tracks and get to the bottom of the corruption. There is no Cameron government, and no Brown government, and no messy hung parliament either – this is a finality beyond the possibility of normal rules purely because this has been Britain’s political 9/11. 8/5, anyone?

Timing of significance – III Cups, reversed

A reversed card in this position suggests time has already elapsed, and this is straightforwardly the end of a three month period in which politics has been shaken out of its complacent and somnolent mien and driven towards some sort of climax. March was marked more by stasis than anything else, though Brown began to look precarious because of worsening economic issues and the debate over Fred the Shred Goodwin. April brought us party politics returning with a vengeance, with the G20, the Budget and Smeargate ruining Brown’s tenuous balance between a stagnant Conservative Party and a fading Labour, and then of course May has been destructive and devastating for all and has redrawn the political map and opened the door to not only to the return of the fringe (which was all but moribund as a result of the return of the Conservative opposition to direct favour) but also the threat of total anarchy still hanging over our heads. Going forward, therefore, we will enter a newer and stranger era, which doesn’t look as if it will end with the current system completely intact.

The expenses scandal latest - Rowan Williams weighs in by asking the public to stop humiliating MPs.

You would almost think he was one.

This just gets better and better - card time.

Why this from a senior churchman, who should know the difference between right and wrong?

The Sun - it lays his motivations bare, as someone who is one of the more political Archbishops and one of the most pro-government we've had. I am relying on Owlperson for this reading, and Owlperson has his own views (quite conservative, positively Tory, but who is satisfied he is able to think outside that narrow remit to embrace social change over the past thirty years), but this to Owlie suggests Williams is laying bare a pro-liberal Establishment viewpoint that he has harboured for a while, and particularly since he was elevated to the Archbishopric by, erm, Tony Blair. "Let them eat cake" is not what the public really ought to hear from their senior clergyman, but as a practicing Anglican I am rather upset that our leader should take this stance. At least, however, it exposes where his loyalties lie, and Owlperson adds that he told me - warned me - about this two years ago when he first came into verbal range.

Why now?

The Hierophant (usually the High Priest) - a fitting card. Williams wants to take a stance on the issue, so he has weighed in - on the side which he thinks is morally right and just. Fresh from the controversy over Sharia law that he was embroiled in last year, he thinks he can essentially politicise the role of Archbishop of Canterbury, and feels that he needs to shore up his own office. This is not likely however to go down well; he has made, however, a judgement that this will enhance his position as the High Priest to Gordon Brown's Emperor. Not wise, but not perhaps entirely foolish in his own mind.

What has he to gain from saying this?

IX Wands - defence and defending his own "flock", but also the support of the Establishment when it comes to what he wants. If he defends them, they will defend him. But he appears here defensive - inside the parliamentary stockade rather than outside it where he belongs.

What are the consequences for us?

IX Pentacles - the Church learns to take a more critical and self-reliant standpoint as Williams shows his true colours. As an Anglican myself I find a churchman defending the greedy and obscene more than I can take. No matter - it furthers the cause of disestablishment better than anything else if its head is prepared to defend the indefensible. If Dr Williams thinks that we - the public, and by proxy the press who revealed this corruption - are undermining democracy, he has firmly left the realm of what the public can expect from a churchman too close to the seat of power and although disestablishment is not currently on the popular agenda, the Nine of Pentacles symbolises self-reliance, and this may indicate that one item on the collective agenda becomes disestablishment of the Church of England.

What are the consequences for him?

IX Swords - A nightmare, quite frankly. This goes beyond what, as a Christian, I can tolerate from someone who preaches humility and Christ-like poverty. We are not the ones undermining democracy. The corrupt, rotten heart of Westminster, not only bent in terms of money but bent in terms of votes (see posts passim) is not worth defending any more, and Williams, by wading into the row on the side of the wrongdoers, may lose more than his parliamentary privilege as an Archbishop of Canterbury. The arrogance of this remark may hasten the advent of disestablishment and it may also claim him as an unwitting victim. Perhaps Dr Williams also has something to hide. No matter, we will see when this comes to a court of law what "blessed are the meek" actually means to him.

On the original Times article I quote above, one of the comments reads:

Is the Archbishop aware of the ten commandments? One that springs to mind is 'thou shalt not steal.'

Says it all really.

Ben Bradshaw has hinted that MPs who have defrauded the taxpayer should be sent to prison.

Ann Main has done a Derek Conway and provided a daughter with a flat on expenses. (By the way, Derek, you can run, but you can't hide - perhaps it was better for you to have been booted a full eighteen months' early; and I'm eager to see the Wintertons and what they can come up with in the way of entertainment. And Iain and Betsy Duncan Smith, although their "crimes" were for misuse of party funds rather than ACA expenses, must be turning in their respective graves too...poor Squirrel Nutkin lost his job over it, hopefully Vulpes Vulpes will follow him with wisteria rather than gladioli hanging out of his trousers, in homage to his hero Morrissey...)

Cards:

Ben's proposal - does it have any chance of happening? Queen of Pentacles - yes - it will be a matter for the longer term for prosecutions to be brought, and they will be brought in less of a climate of fear and hysteria, but they will have to happen as a matter of the affair being brought to a close and a new era opened. A very matter of fact card, suggesting this is not going to be a witch-hunt but a just and fair - and almost bureaucratic - procedure.

Ann Main - VII Swords - she thought she could get away with it. But, sorry, Ann, caught red-handed thieving. A candidate for doing time if ever there was one and if we can get the legal apparatus in place so that all parties and none can be scrutinised by the bench.

Having just seen a humorous steel sign for sale at a stall in Reading's Broad Street Mall, "HM Prison <---> Long Stay Carpark" (borrowed from an American sign no doubt given the format, typeface and layout), there floated to mind a thought - "long stays can be rather expensive - maybe they could put it on expenses". I think I should start carrying my new camera around as this could get quite entertaining.

This is getting too much for party politics and more and more we need an independent commission or convention set up to sort this out once and for all. The Queen cannot do it, except in name only, HM Government is in the thick of it, HM Opposition would like to do it but again is in this too deep for anything else (and I have always been loathe to trust any party politician with reform of the electoral system: all third/fourth/fifth parties would love PR but if they got into government under FPTP, how long would that promise last? About as long as Derek Lewis' whelk stall, quite possibly...) and so...who?

Perhaps we need a Jaruzelski figure, or a Latin American military coup, to sort us all out and engineer a transition to a civilian government. However the thought of Geoff Hoon in sunglasses is enough to make me spill my coffee over my precious laptop, so maybe not. I'd like to write in a bit of a script here - perhaps we could ask the Prime Minister Elect (see my Rotten Borough articles) Michael Howard to take over...perhaps it really is time for, in Led Zeppelin's words, a spring clean for our May queens?

Please. Pretty Please. Pretty Please With Sugar On Top.

A reduced majority for Labour in Salford, home of Hazel Blears. Barracking from the BNP aside, this is a curious result but strangely enough it may mean that Labour are still rather more safe than they appear. Even the Sun is not wholly endorsing Camerfox, instead opting for the "wait and see but we want an election" line that they trot out before most elections. The Tories didn't figure in this election - why not?! - but the BNP were the main threat here.

So time to look at the cards - a quick Past, Present, Future without card descriptions because I've got a bus to catch in 20 minutes.

Past - Knight of Pentacles

A concrete and deft use of money - no, not on Hazel Blears' expense account, but the actual politics of this by-election was less about national issues and more about local discussions and issues that made Labour's position, although damaged, still tenable. Labour are doing enough locally for that to be enough to hold them the seat.

Present - IV Swords, reversed

No rest for the wicked - there is unquiet rest here, Labour know they could no longer rely on the safe holding of Salford even before this scandal broke, so they are actually not a bit surprised and relieved by the result - but know they need to be more pro-active to hold on in the future.

Future - II Wands

Again, putting policies into practice, but stopping short of the silver bullet to completely eradicate the challenge from the BNP. It's nice to be reading positively for something, but this represents the commitment Labour do show on the ground to their constituents even though at higher levels commitments might be somewhat different.

Another day, and another set of resignations ahead, as the

TEN OF SWORDS

comes out of my pack this morning.

As before, it means catastrophe, ruin, destruction, death, the point of no return, and necessary sacrifices (not necessarily in this order).

Since there is nothing more useful to be said about this card, there is a good song that encapsulates the mood at the moment. "A Caveat for Cutpurses" comes from the Ben Jonson play "Bartholomew Fair" (he also wrote "Volpone", a satire which cast the characters as animals, the title name meaning "Big Fox" and which I use for the character of Cameron in my political strip - currently written for the drawer because of the personal references, but which hopefully will see the light of day at some point on this blog if nowhere else). James Raynard recorded it in a slightly different, truncated version ("Sir" instead of "Youth", in the main), but it looks as if Parliamentarians of Jonson's day were just as bent as ours.

Read it - and weep.

Nadine Dorries has likened the current expenses scandal to a "witch-hunt".

Perhaps she should look at her own party's conduct over Smeargate and her own unjustified bills (and forgotten hotel rooms) and consider why the public is so eager for news of this. Perhaps she should also think that some witch-hunts - unlike the McCarthyite scandals in the 1950s - are justified when another £18,000 of our money has gone down the toilet in her name.

It looks like she is less of "Little Dorrit" and more like Fanny Dorrit, who is undone in the novel by thinking she has married into money and then finding herself ruined by her father-in-law's corrupt bank. Or Mr Dorrit, whose new-found wealth goes straight to his head and eventually catches up with him and sends him mad. Never was a more apt film shown in good time last Christmas. Perhaps it is time for a re-run of all three series of "House of Cards" - but this time on BBC1 rather than on the excellent successor to UKTV Documentaries, YeSTERDAY, which intersperses old episodes of Starkey's Monarchy with classic 80s "period" drama. (House of Elliot has just finished with Jack "Vulpes Vulpes-alike" Maddox winning a seat in Parliament as a Labour candidate. Cue the inevitable, and wholly spontaneous, "wonder what his expenses will be like". This has gone beyond a joke.)

Labour's Stephen Pound, on the other hand, not apparently implicated in all of this, has taken the right attitude - that it was time scammers were brought to book. It's probably easier to be distant from this if you have not been caught with your hand in our communal till, but it should go to prove that it is possible to be an MP and not scam the taxpayer.

Off with their heads.

EDIT, 13.41 - Foxy has slapped her down. Oo-er, missus - was it perchance with a sprig of wisteria?

America's The Daily Show has got hold of us now.

The absence as yet of a pithy "-gate" name for this scandal probably shows just how important and system-threatening it is - it can't be neatly pigeonholed and filed away under "Miscellaneous Other News". But evidently people are trying hard.

Thanks to John Rentoul of the Independent for blogging this.

Peter Luff is the next onto the guillotine over £17,000-worth of toilet seats.

There is a train of thought which suggests that newly elected MPs should, in establishing a second household, be able to claim for furnishings and expenses. My mother relates that while we were living between Cemaes Bay in Anglesey and Workington in Cumbria (when I was all of 3 and my sister a baby) she bought duplicates of everything for the other house she had to furnish (my dad worked in Anglesey during the week and we lived back in Cumbria at the weekend, and I remember thinking that was how people rented houses, or what renting a house meant). I can't remember the exact reasons why we didn't just move down to Anglesey anyway (and we stopped coming down when the Welsh playgroup rejected me as not being the child of one or more Welsh language speakers) but apparently the duplication necessary was of the order of highchairs and another cot for my sister. So outfitting two houses for purposes other than scamming the taxpayer doesn't sound too bad to me.

The problem really is, as Owlperson advises from his perch in spirit, that the goods are of a quality not enjoyed by us mere mortals (my mother is a teacher, now a headteacher, and my dad is a civil engineer, and I remember money worries during the mid-80s - "Mummy, if you don't have any money, why do you not go to the hole in the wall to get some" being my response at the time - it is also remarkable how many couples in their network of friends fit that particular pattern, but never mind) and it's the sheer scale of the payments made on the taxpayer's behalf to people who are, in cases like Hogg and other Tory backbenchers, not to mention someone with a long bushy tail and bright cunning eyes who has a bill outstanding for wisteria clearance, already rolling in it.

Luff's card is Death, reversed - another one who, perhaps, might feel he has had a good innings in parliament and will stand aside ready for a foxy-friend to be parachuted in. The end of this scandal - hopefully with the scalps of both current party leaders, if not a hat-trick of top resignations too - cannot come soon enough, and personally, the parties should not be relying too much on their current stable of candidates, given the disgrace the current lot have got us into. My feeling is that the whole parliament will be trashed, the wheat separated from the chaff, and then the candidate list purged of chancers who feel a safe seat is a pension pot waiting to happen. The refreshing thing about this scandal is that it is sweeping through Westminster as a whole, not just ruining one party or the other.

Off with their heads. Good night.

A very interesting piece from the chief executive of the Taxpayer's Alliance, Matthew Elliot.

Reform of parliament must not be left to the politicians themselves to do it - the temptation to gerrymander is always there. Nothing more really to add to this except a card reading for its future prospects (as I suspect some of my one-card readings have been more geared towards the present tense of the situation rather than the future prognosis). I pull IX Wands, reversed - this is one way through the general stockade the wayward parliamentarians have built around themselves. It isn't as crude as the political primaries suggested (I don't agree with this as it would open one party's selection process to meddlesome intruders from other parties, and the London primary, after all, produced Boris Johnson as its result) and it does allow a mechanism of censure that doesn't rely on the honour of someone like Piers Merchant in 1997 but on a formal element of procedure. Owlperson hopes he will be able to whisper this in the ear of the next Prime Minister as it seems this one is finished.

Meanwhile, Jo Swinson is under scrutiny - a friend of mine from university - over her make-up bills and household establishment expenses. Pulling a card for her, it's The Empress, reversed - not a good omen as it is the reverse of a card designed to show the grounded and solid nature of a deep, feminine personality. Thus the facade Swinson shows as a kind of "Blair's Babe" for the Liberal Democrats who once stood up to Shirley Williams over is revealed as vapid and empty as any political hack of the last two decades. She was engaging and focussed at university on the Liberal Democrat caused, while I wavered betweeh Labour and none-of-the-above, unable to commit myself totally to the prevailing winds in student politics and unable to keep my mouth shut at Labour Students' Conference by publicly making a speech against the Women's Network as "jobs for the girls". I gave everything like that up when I walked out of Millbank in late 1999 after a summer job breaking the Labour Party's Excalibur machine. Perhaps I was just not meant to be in politics before this watershed, and it's people like me - who never wanted to be part of any "machine" - who will inherit this earth. Sorry, Jo, but you embody the problem, not the solution.

While I no longer feel jealous of her, my mother and sister raise the question - just how much more expensive is it for women to maintain their appearance compared to men? Is there a point at which make-up for official functions becomes like business miles and normal clothes - incidental expenses. As a woman who doesn't use much make-up but buys moisturiser for my job at a newsagents because putting the papers together in the morning makes my hands black and rather raw, particularly after the ink has been scrubbed off them so I can then go handling the bread order. This needs moisturiser if I am to keep my sanity intact after I've finished (I start work at 7am on Saturday and don't get to go home until 7pm). So - if my boss was not meaner than Gordon Brown on a bad day at the Treasury - I could probably get away with claiming it. I do therefore feel sorry for Jo Swinson, though as I said, thankfully I no longer feel jealous that someone in my year at uni got there before I did.

After all I may still have all that to come (Owlperson's subtle hints notwithstanding as I do not have a party label at the moment) in the post-Expenses Scandal (no pithy "gate" has emerged yet) Parliamentary milieu. That's better than getting a few points on your Boots loyalty card paid for, isn't it?

Quickie this morning as I have to go to work in five minutes.

Eight of Wands, reversed

The momentum is still there but, since the Eight upright suggests a coherent direction forming, for example in this current situation the targetting of fire on one particular party or member, the issue now becomes a lot less controllable and manipulable.

Cameron, meanwhile, is still defending Bill Wiggin, MP for Leominster and a Tory whip:

The future of a third leading Conservative, Bill Wiggin, was also in doubt after The Daily Telegraph claimed that the Conservative whip – a contemporary of Mr Cameron's at Eton – claimed £11,000 in interest payments for a property without a mortgage. He insisted he had not profited and had made "an administrative error", but he could join Labour's "phantom mortage" MPs Elliot Morley and David Chaytor in facing possible criminal proceedings.

Mr Wiggin, the MP for Leominster in Herefordshire, filed for the expenses after declaring that his constituency property was his second home. He stressed yesterday that he meant to claim for his London residence instead.

- The Independent, 21 May 2009

with the Telegraph reporting that Cameron is seeing no need to sack him. The depths of Vulpes Vulpes know no bounds - and yet Benedict Brogan in the Telegraph still finds the nerve to praise him.

Way to go, lads.

Another MP bites the dust. The Judgement card is in full effect, although Brown has maintained his support for Hazel Blears - for now.

Anthony Steen has said he will stand down at the next election. He is parroting the Tory cant that an election needs to be held ASAP (it does, but not under conditions that Cameron or others of his cronies want) and that his £87,000 bill for forestry services claimed from the taxpayer has rendered him unfit for continuing in office. Card?

The Hermit, reversed.

Another opportunity to go back to your former constituency and prepare for a little light gardening. Bye-bye.

Seeing as the discussion over Hazel Blears is not abating, even though Brown has at present given her his support, I thought I'd pull a card for her - one card, not a whole reading, partly because she is just another "corrupt little porker" ((c) If, Steve Bell, last week) and partly because I have to go to work at 2pm.

I pulled Queen of Pentacles reversed for our bleary, Blairy little friend.

Reversed, the Queen becomes greedy, spiteful, extravagant, suspicious, demanding and full of complaints about the ingratitude of the world. She is blind to others' good intentions. Beware of succumbing to her oddly persuasive views.

Blears may survive today but is looking precarious because of her own bad character under pressure. I saw her speak live at a Fabian conference in early 2004 - shortly before I crossed the floor to the Tories - and while her panel-mate Frank Field was a lucid, engaging and witty speaker, Blears and, elsewhere at the forum, Stephen Twigg, were as the card says - unable to see that the Tories under Howard represented a serious challenge to their authority and arrogant enough to believe there was only one opinion in the world - theirs, and by association, their master's. Blears is doomed because of her attitude to politics, not her snout in the collective trough. The good thing about this scandal is that it is weeding out all the people who can't run a piss-up in a brewery and bringing out their true colours where the back-and-forth of normal business has not. Good riddance, in other words.

With Hazel Blears now looking shaky, she probably doesn't want to know that the card I've drawn today is -

Judgement.

This card signifies the ending of one stage of life and beginning of another. It is a moment for reflection and self-judgement, measuring what you have achieved against the ideals that you were aiming for, because fresh opportunities to achieve them will arise. Armed with honest self-appraisal, you will be best poised to take advantage of them. Meanwhile, it pays to be generous in your judgement of others.

Not a good card for a bunch of sheep waiting to be slaughtered for their part in this gargantuan fiasco, but even now the Speaker has gone there is evidently more to follow. This was the card that was in the "seeds" position for the last reading - for the reform of parliament - so the situation is continuing to gain momentum rather than subside now many MPs no doubt feel they have found a scapegoat. With David Cameron effectively neutered as a credible opposition by his childish and rather hypocritical calls for an election, the actual opposition to this huge mess can only come from outside parliament.

If anyone has any sensible answers, please let me know via comments. 

After Michael Martin's departure - now scheduled for June 21, but I have a feeling it will be brought forward - the Torygraph reports that the role of the Speaker will be diminished to ceremonial and procedural and will be stripped of the functions of a chief Parliamentary executive.

How will this work? Let's ask the cards.

Situation around the Speaker's current personality - The Hanged Man

You are at a life crossroads at which sacrifices and patience are needed if the right choices are to be made. Submit gracefully, and all will be well. Life needs to be viewed from a fresh angle, and what may seem a total distraction to your plans may just take you in a fresh, creative direction. You may feel you are wasting time hanging around, but it will prove to be well worth your while.

The Speaker is hoisted by his own petard - he tried to fiddle things, knowing that people would support him because it benefitted them, but now they are caught out, he is made the initial scapegoat, though I do believe that more heads will roll as people try to save their own skins and fail to stand up to the hard light of day. For the moment, there is no going forward with this man who has abused the role, and as such it is necessary for a change, not only of the person, but of the job description.

Situation around the role of Speaker as distinct from Michael Martin himself - VIII Wands

The Eight indicates sudden progress that is possibly too fast for comfort, so try to slow things down a little and avoid over-hasty decisions that you might later regret. This is an exciting and well-starred time with travel, new business partnerships and long-term romance all likely - just bear in mind that life is not always this easy, and plan for those rainy days.

This is the impetus needed to reform the role of the Speaker in general, and Owlperson cautions that this may not really be necessary (the role would land with the government, never the most independent arbiter) or desirable, but it has been building for a long time and needs to find expression. As it stands it is not all a good idea, since the Speaker is meant to be an independent figure rather than a government placeman. However since the partisanship of politics is enmeshing the neutrality of some functions of the political systems hitherto immune from it, a longer-term neutral solution may well be found if this and previous Speakers are found to have been pleasing their previous political masters rather than ruling Parliament in the interests of all parties and none.

Consciousness - appearance of the role to the public - VII Swords

Hope appears after a long struggle, but keep your guard up. You face opposition to your plans and it would be wise to learn its source, but you can achieve your aims if you perseverer and be certain of your facts. Avoid direct confrontation, however, instead, let your ideas speak for themselves.

There is public support for this move, but it is not enough to wholly deflect the spotlight from those MPs who have been found wanting. The role of the Speaker is no different in this regard to the roles of the guilty MPs, and although some may regard this as a relief for Parliament, I doubt the public will be satisfied with just this particular scalp.

Subconsciousness - actual role in Parliament's eyes - Strength, reversed

Strength reversed reveals wasted effort, failure, and the possible alienation of others through the abuse of power. In the reversed card, the dragon has won the battle and the woman has become tainted by self-interest. By losing sight of any larger goal, she loses the sympathy and the support of others. Here, restraint, modesty, and patience are called for.

Parliament definitely found its scapegoat, but more vengeance will be unleashed if the situation is not settled in a genuine - and in no way partisan - manner. Parliament is rapidly losing credibility to deal with this alone; the political parties are both in ruins; and so there needs to be much more done to put the situation - and British democracy - right.

Roots - the necessity for this move - II Pentacles

Difficulty and embarrassment at the beginning of a new business venture is suggested by this card, but the prospects are very promising if you are prepared to put in the hard work and resist making reckless gambles. Times of change like this are full of opportunity but also risk, so be prepared for a rollercoaster of a journey.

This is again the anchor of the situation - things moved so deliberately and in enough co-ordination to force Martin's resignation, but this coherent, clockwork motion will not just grind to a halt. The Two often means the beginning of movement with a slow, decisive element of change, and this could mean that the situation only accelerates towards its climactic moments, whether or not any more senior figures are deposed in the process.

Seeds - what will come next, practically - VIII Cups

Restlessness causes you to question many aspects of your life and possibly with good cause, as maybe it is time for some major changes. But remember it is your own restlessness and need for a sense of purpose that is driving you. Others will not appreciate being blamed for what is basically your problem.

This relentless forward movement is not going to abate with this resignation, but may even grow stronger and more pronounced - with major players being toppled along with flunkies who have already walked the plank. Parliament must stop looking for scapegoats and start taking responsibility - starting with those who are also in positions of power in their own parties and could have made it clearer earlier that this behaviour was unacceptable. Now there is no turning back.

Seeds - what will come next, ceremonially and officially - Judgement

This card signifies the ending of one stage of life and beginning of another. It is a moment for reflection and self-judgement, measuring what you have achieved against the ideals that you were aiming for, because fresh opportunities to achieve them will arise. Armed with honest self-appraisal, you will be best poised to take advantage of them. Meanwhile, it pays to be generous in your judgement of others.

Official as well as practical decisions will be taken which will force other figures to step aside, stand down, or deselect themselves. Officials, MPs, ministers, Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet - they are all in the firing line for this and the machinery turning now will not spare anyone involved to any degree. It is an official crisis, not a mere practical or partisan problem, and this demands official developments which will shock the entire world.

Advice to the government - The Fool, reversed

This is an unlucky warning of imminent disaster unless the person it refers to pulls themselves together and starts acting responsibly. All the Fool’s worst qualities of fecklessness and lack of commitment are about to demand a heavy price. His confidence will prove hollow.

The government cannot fight this. I warned in April that events would dictate the outcome of the current events. Trying to use events for their own purposes - and this goes double for the Opposition - will only exacerbate rather than ameliorate the problems. Time to 'fess up and make a clean sweep - or be swept away.

Warning to the government - Ace of Wands, reversed

The reversed Ace warns of the danger of getting too attached to new beginnings that haven't been throught through properly, of being unrealistic and not fully committed to your undertakings. There is a slim chance of success here, but only if you work at it.

The removal of the Speaker is hasty and only contributes to the growing inferno. A quick resignation won't change anything. The government is taking note of this issue but it is too little, too late. It needs to, as I said above, do something to stop this and get things back on an even keel. But that would be too much for a party already showing very little will to try and wrest back control of the agenda to where they were safer. It is only a blessing to them that the Opposition is up to their eyeballs in this too, otherwise there would be no doubt about the result of the next election.

Direction for Parliament - The Hierophant, reversed

Reversed, the Hierophant becomes unconventional but also weak, gullible and unreliable. In a spread, this card often indicates a need for unconventional solutions, but may warn of treachery from colleagues and superiors. Postpone long-term commitments until the situation clears.

The overturning of this convention and the removal of the Speaker for the first time in 300 years means that the situation will involve the undoing of more parliamentary privileges and conventions and the reconstitution of the foundation of our democracy. The situation needs to be assessed and dealt with before anyone can make any moves on to something more solid such as actual social policy and debate. This must be sorted - now.

Solution - VI Swords

The Six reveals unexpected developments, possibly a journey or business opportunity that will open the way to realising your ambitions in a surprising way. Leap at the chance whatever the immediate obstacles; this is not the time for hesitation or counting the pennies. In the long term it will feel worthwhile.

The necessity for clearing the decks and sorting the system goes beyond cynical partisan calls for an election to put the opposition in the driving seat. The opposition is now in the public's hands, and this is true democracy in action to make sure the solution found is not a cold partisan cruelty or injustice but a genuinely exploratory and direct answer to the manipulation the public have put up with over the past thirty years. If it needs collapse, then collapse will be had.

Outcome - The High Priestess

Inspiration, learning, mystery, understanding of the inner workings of life, enlightenment and serenity are all represented by this card, with a hint that serenity can sometimes lead to emotional detachment from daily events. Often this card implies that hidden spiritual factors are currently affecting your life, so look carefully within, or consult a respected advisor.

There is the potential here that reform will be deep, thorough and genuine, rather than cursory, superficial and partisan. Parliament begins with the Speaker and must end with an examination of the conduct of all its members, and the removal of those who cannot stand up to scrutiny. It must not end with an election manipulated in favour of one party, nor in the silencing of opposition and opinion with the removal of one problem kingpin. The High Priestess will ensure this happens, and wipe the slate clean. If this destroys Brown and Cameron in the process, so be it.

Douglas Hogg is to stand down at the next election - Owlperson will miss him but it is and should be inevitable that the man with the moat should, in future, clean it at his own expense rather than ours.

Card for him: The Hermit, reversed - Reversed, the Hermit represents over-caution, enforced solitude, timidity and fear of facing the world and honestly interacting with others. His meditations are an indulgence and an excuse for avoiding life, and he misses chances to help others with his knowledge through hesitation, clumsiness, and lack of empathy. Hogg - Viscount Hailsham - was doomed from the moment the word "moat" entered this scandal, and will now have to retire to the island within rather than be allowed to remain representing his Lincolnshire constituency.

The only downside - The Lovers reversed - is that the candidate who will be imposed on the constituency will not get on well with the local association, and will cause a lot of friction with people in the future as well. Oh dear.

A silly story to lighten the mood somewhat from the Daily Mirror: Tory candidate issues apology after calling MP a c***.

In a word...oops. A card for this poor guy - Nine of Pentacles reversed - the undoing of a fair establishment of a local powerbase and a personal blunder which might hurt his chances later on. An innocent typo which could be the undoing of someone who was working hard to solidify his position and make himself attractive to the electorate. 

The rot has now reached the Speaker himself, with Michael “Owlbastard” Martin announcing his resignation “soon” from the post. How soon it turns out to be is another matter but this vindicates the card reading earlier on – the Six of Pentacles shows its constructive self as a sop to the angry public, but will it actually solve anything or just make the public and press more bloodthirsty and cause more heads to roll?

Reading, as usual.

MICHAEL MARTIN’S RESIGNATION

Situation – The World, reversed

The World in the reverse position warns of disappointment, a lack of imagination, and failure to carry projects right through to the end. Much more perseverance, determination and imagination are now needed if you hope to realise any of your dreams. Stagnation is bound to set in if you don’t keep supplying fresh energy to your undertakings.

This is evidently the seismic moment in this situation, and is the situation in which there is no return – there needs to be serious detoxification of Parliament and all who sail in her. It is a deep tragedy for the system and the reputation of the House of Commons; and this represents the speeding up rather than the slowing down of what is going on here.

Appearance to public – Ace of Swords

The Ace of Swords signifies triumph through strength and determination, particularly in the intellectual or inventive spheres. It marks the beginning of a fresh era, a promotion perhaps, or some other kind of advancement. A danger of the intellectualism symbolised by Swords is that it can be applied equally to right and wrong causes, so you need to examine your true motives with care.

The public at least has the blood it needs to keep things moving in the direction in which it has much more say in the political process and a lot more “purchasing power” than in the last few years. This marks the breakthrough of a real civic state in which opinion is not carefully corralled into neat boxes – Labour, Conservative, Cameroon, Blairite – but is allowed to flow in genuine and direct ways to see justice done.

Appearance to press – The Fool

A new beginning with fresh adventures ahead, although there is a very real danger of it all going horribly wrong. The bag on the Fool’s shoulder represents natural talents that he could employ usefully if he took the trouble to open the bag, but he generally doesn’t. For wild optimists this card is a warning to try to temper enthusiasm with a little common sense. For pessimists, it suggests lightening up a little bit.

Although the press built, fuelled and lit this fire, it should realise that tempering its enthusiasm and allowing the public to have the final say is important. Martin has gone, but it will need to continue pressing its point across the board – and not let people with £10,000 paddocks cast the first stone. But the press must also be fair and not cheat the public by channelling this, manipulating this and directing it at their preferred targets. Otherwise it could find itself in the firing line.

Appearance to Parliament – VIII Pentacles, reversed

There is a danger of wasting the opportunities in front of you through vanity and indiscipline. Thinking purely in the short term means that you are likely to miss a very real chance to make a worthwhile impact on the world. Avoid borrowing money just now.

Parliament perhaps thinks this resignation is sufficient to restore their reputation and manipulate MPs’ partisan interests. With even charges that the Chief Whip was involved in this thievery – and his opposite numbers in the Conservative Party don’t escape charges either – Parliament needs to steer clear of denial and remember that this is just the first of many casualties. Sadly, I think some people feel this is enough. It is very much not and will not just stop here.

Underlying appearance to the parties – King of Wands

The King of Wands is a charming leader who is energetic, honest, diplomatic and generous. His fatherliness can tend toward being too trusting. Being naturally loyal and conscientious, he is a great friend in times of trouble, being unafraid to take up arms in a good cause. In a spread he can either represent the attitude needed to address the situation, or the person you should turn to for help.

There is a sense that Lord Foulkes, who defended Martin to the hilt as late as the night before last, was right – he is being made a scapegoat for the sins of others. The parties hope that this stroke of decisiveness may deflect the difficulties from them and/or help slow the momentum of the wrecking ball coming towards Parliament, but this is never within their control and once unleashed, fire as represented by the Wands can get destructively out of control.

Underlying appearance to the Prime Minister – Knight of Cups

The Knight of Cups is romantic, loyal, generous, friendly, thoughtful and idealistic. He inspires new ventures in both the romantic and practical fields without expecting much in return. The Knight is happiest when he is embarked upon some great spiritual quest like that of the Holy Grail. He signals the possibility of an idealistic new venture coming your way, possibly from an old friend.

Brown is able, not to deflect difficulties (no-one can) but to develop things further – he has the power now to direct things against the real perpetrators and it is obvious that, although Cameron’s proposal to call an election did not find widespread support, Martin’s resignation signals a collapse in support from all sides. Therefore there is some channelling involved here by Brown to make sure the real people win out, but the Knight here rather than a King or even Queen shows Brown is just as much at the mercy of public opinion as anyone else and is dealing with this day-by-day (as is, by the way, Cameron) without any real control.

Underlying appearance to the Speaker himself – The Chariot

Triumph through the careful balancing of opposites and courage in the face of danger are shown by this card. Turmoil, upheaval, and excitement on a journey that can be metaphorical or real, but either way leave you feeling that you have arrived in a different place. Hard work at this stage is recognised and rewarded for a change, but be careful not to relax too soon.

The Speaker here just went too far too fast. He has made this step out into the firing line, but he evidently expects others to follow, willingly or unwillingly. In doing this he is increasing the momentum in the situation, and as the Chariot is often drawn showing two horses – or here dragons – pulling the cart apart with their wild, untempered enthusiasm, this is energy which the Speaker is only increasing rather than slowing down.

Roots of the situation – Two of Cups, reversed

Disappointment, quarrels and misunderstandings threaten to end in the breakdown of partnerships in either love or work. Beware of rash decisions you will later regret. It’s worth trying to work through the difficulties first.

The consensus and convention which keeps the Speaker somewhat immune from this kind of political danger has broken down and this card simply acts as an anchor in the current disruption and devastation that this scandal has brought to Westminster’s doors.

Seeds of the situation – IX Wands

 You enjoy well-earned success gained through honesty, hard work and intelligence. However, troubles are brewing on the horizon, and you are soon likely to be tested to the very limits of your patience and ability. Take the time now to cultivate key allies, and check too that your finances are robust enough to cope with unexpected demands.

There is more difficulty and danger ahead and Parliament digs in behind its stockade to prepare for an assault on its values and systems. The defensiveness obviously comes from the complicity in this by many Members, and this in turn will probably exacerbate the public’s disgust and contempt rather than alleviate it, particularly with the European elections coming up in less than three weeks’ time.

Consequences for Parliament – The Star, reversed

When reversed, the card signals failure, wrong choices, disappointment and confusion. Although it stops short of promising imminent disaster, the Star reversed warns of the danger of trusting to false promises and unrealistic schemes that will lead nowhere. Optimism is usually a blessing, but when it is ungrounded in reality it can become a curse.

Parliament can, purely and simply, face more turmoil as a result of this, not less. If they believed it was simply necessary to pull down the Speaker and have done with it – refocusing on more “pressing” concerns such as European policy and other measures they desire, it will be revealed that this is no longer an option.

Consequences for Labour – Knight of Swords

The Knight of Swords is bold and enthusiastic, but also imaginative and clever like his Queen. He is a great champion of good causes and inspires others by his idealism and dedication to any cause he adopts. He is decisive and, while others dither over a course of action, he will just plunge headlong into it and generally win the day. He is a symbol of creative upheaval, usually leading to success.

Labour can make a lot out of this and can bring these qualities into their discourse in a positive way. However the Knight here always represents going too fast, too far and too soon, and they have to manage and control these impulses rather than just go out in a blaze of glory to make sure they bring this issue under control.

Consequences for the Tories – IX Swords

Beware tempting but false invitations. Deception and even possible violence are warned by this card, but bear in mind that adversity is the best test of character, just as a sword requires fire and hammering to get a sharp edge. In the long run, know that all adversity can be turned to the good.

Two polls have now put the Tories on less than 40% and this represents more of a shift than Labour muddling about the 20s-per-cent. It represents Cameron’s failure to turn this situation to a genuine advantage (he is responsible for unethical claims, and if someone’s £4.47 tin of dog-food is under scrutiny, the value of his gardening bills barely grazing £700 is not really the issue so much as they exist at all) and although he is superficially dealing with this well, it cannot hold him up above the minimum necessary to win. This will get worse for him before it gets better.

Consequences for the public – III Swords

Argument and strife threaten your plans. Be patient. Separation, frustration and disillusionment all threaten, but if you hold onto your long-term goals they can still be realised – you just have to work out who your real friends are. Break-ups are always painful, but totally necessary in the long run.

The public is set against the representatives it elects, and the disillusionment and frustration here is not satisfied by Martin’s resignation – it is intensified. This issue represents a real divorce from their government and opposition, and will continue to fester and consume its victims unabated because all the two main parties can offer in their defence is silly, partisan posturing. It is no longer enough – everyone is tainted as a result.

Consequences for the press – VIII Swords

Criticism, blame or possible illness frustrate your plans and require patience to overcome. Judgement is tried and tested at times like this, but it is important to remember there is no better way to test the value of your beliefs, especially if you have the humility to adapt them to reality.

The press is further able to control and direct public fury but not contain and channel it to their master plan. They are increasingly trapped by the wholesale bankruptcy and lack of clean leaders to pin their hopes on, and they fall into the same trap they have laid for others by losing public confidence in their choice of vessels. It will consume them as it consumes politicians, because they champion the worst offenders as the best ones to patrol the accounts.

Direction – The Empress

A mother or mother-figure, either a symbol of one’s own mother or a reminder of the ideal. However, this card can simply signal a time of fertility and abundance. As a ruler the Empress is generous, and scrupulously fair, giving a lead by subtle hint and example rather than direct order. This card suggests action and worldly success for any imminent enterprise, whether it be marriage, work or art.

There is a sense that arbitration and judgement is the next step, with an angry public refusing to back the champions of containment and the need for more imposing and shaping order to be created in the situation. The Empress wears green – the colour of Parliament and of the fringe party the Greens, who to me hold the solution by setting an example of pure, direct, positive and progressive politics. The answer lies not in their policies – I am still sceptical of the scale of the threat of climate change – but in their methods and outwardly fresh way of doing political business. The Empress will help to change politics for the better – but she will be stern and unforgiving in who she bestows these gifts upon.

Solution – X Swords

Traditionally this is the unluckiest card in the Tarot pack, being the ruling number of the unluckiest suit. As such it signals calamity on almost every front – health, finances, or romance – but it can also mean the ending of pointless commitments and the beginning of a fresh and wonderful stage of your life.

There is no turning back – Parliament is heading for a destructive climax and nothing – and no-one – can control or rebalance it in time to relieve the potential suffering here. But the suffering happens to those who have already enjoyed their time, and who have abused their privileges, trust funds, second jobs, second/third/fourth homes (moats not included) – so they will get the punishment they deserve while those innocent of this crime will be the ones who inherit the system and its hope of promise.

Outcome – Page of Pentacles

Intuitive, sensitive, creative and hard-working, the Page is a successful student with psychic tendencies of which he is not always conscious. The card can signify good news such as success in a test or examination, or the attitude needed to make it happen. He can be a bit of a dreamer though, so engrossed in whatever project he is focussed upon that everyday life may fall apart around him.

This holds a balanced and progressive outcome containing seeds of the new order presaged by the Ten of Swords above. Destruction leads to new beginnings, and the dedication to the project required, but this is only possible after the current Gotterdammerung has run its course and this has to be faced first by everyone – media included – before this new world can take shape.

Michael Martin, the world's least loved Bubo Scandiacus (Snowy Owl totem), is to stand down as Speaker - soon.

Hopefully, "soon" means "tomorrow" rather than "in nine months' time" like it did with the last high-profile casualty of parliamentary politics (anyone remember Tony Blair) but this old owl will not be missed from the Parliament he has presided over and misguided through this whole affair

However, MPs should not feel that this satiates the public - I will read for it now and post later but it's not going to appease too many people who see those who have taken the money round on the person who let them do so. We as voters have a real historic chance to send a message to the people who have stolen from us, and those MPs who are blameless should now press for further scalps to make sure Parliament's reputation is genuinely restored and those who are guilty do not feel this is the only thing the public will accept.

Mark Mardell writes on Cameron's campaign launch.

Helena Kennedy writes on the consequences of the sleaze hysteria of recent weeks.

Meanwhile, this morning the Chief Whip is in trouble over £18,000.

It would be really great to have Michael Howard back, he would know what to do with this shambles of a government, he would know what to say to stop the haemmorhage of Conservative votes (that is, put up some actual policy - still nothing from Vulpes Vulpes) and go right for the jugular with righteous anger knowing he's in the clear. Sadly I'm not sure Foxy has any clue any more - just empty, vapid words which he hopes will script him right into the dog-in-the-manger position he currently enjoys in the Conservative party picking at the bones of his predecessors' hard work. Oh well, that Judgement card is only going to get closer.

Today's card of the day shows things calming down (somewhat) and solidifying in direction (somewhat).

Six of Pentacles

Financial success comes your way and justice demands that you pass the favour along. Just as others have taken a gamble on your talents, now it's time for you to do the same, either by sponsoring some struggling aspirant or simply by sharing some of your talents with the less fortunate in the world.

A day in which things appear to be constructively done rather than destructively demolished. Some actual consequence comes of recent events, and things are said and done that will have serious lasting results rather than just being made up of volatile hysteria or desperate, bailing-out-the-people-ACA-has-bailed-out-in-the-past spin.

David Cameron and The Sun are now calling for a general election – presumably so Foxy can cash in his chips on this one before the rest of us find out that he can’t govern his way out of a paper bag. The Sun is also backing this campaign – but with Nick Clegg’s refusal to participate, how far can Cameron actually get with this crusade, particularly when “Moatgate” is named after one of his own backbencher’s profligate claims. The problem I see is two-fold: one, the Tories are as deep in the muck as Labour are and cannot run an election campaign without, presumably, some bright spark dressing up as a wisteria bush and running round after Not-so-fantastic Mr Fox. Two, the election when it comes will be fought on policy. For the last three and a half years Tories all over the place have been confidently predicting they will have their policies sorted “in a few months”. They will fall at the first hurdle – because they will have to release a blank manifesto to make sure Labour don’t steal their policies first and walk home with them. It’s a risky gamble, but it’s like going naked into the Houses of Parliament convinced you are dressed in a bright white suit. The cynicism of Foxy, which is mistaken by some people in the media for leadership, is breathtaking and thanks to Nick Clegg, this probably won’t find the momentum it needs before it is too late for everyone involved, not just some chancer who has forgotten he is listed in the Torygraph annals along with quite a number of his Shadow Cabinet colleagues plus a good number of backbenchers. He cannot escape scrutiny just because he is ahead in the polls – he is the pot calling the kettle black.

A reading would help here, wouldn’t it? One for Foxy, then one for the Sun’s own motivations in this. The first one won’t use reversals, but the second will.

PART 1 – VULPES VULPES

Situation – The Moon

A choice needs to be made that could determine your happiness for a long time ahead. You need to be guided by intuition and feelings when making this choice, but at the same time there is a real danger of delusion, of being misled by wishful thinking, or by someone whose judgement you trust. Times like this are true tests of character and your grasp on reality.

The Moon symbolises equivocation and going on gut feelings. The problem is, Foxy’s gut is informed not by what he genuinely feels but by the cooing of various courtiers and yes-men. I don’t think I have seen him really go too far into public since the day he had to leave an inner-London estate after someone swore at him live on Sky News, and I don’t think he has enough contact with the outer world to know how much the Tories are reviled too over this. No-one is going to vote Tory or Labour and his backbenchers and Shadow Cabinet are deep in the drink too – his own claims show a £680 blemish that his £3m-worth estate could and should have funded. It is someone caught with his hands in the sweet jar trying to foist the blame onto someone else and it is not going to solve anything merely to change the man at the top – if such an election would produce the result needed.

Consciousness – IX Wands

You enjoy well-earned success gained through honesty, hard work and intelligence. However, troubles are brewing on the horizon, and you are soon likely to be tested to the very limits of your patience and ability. Take the time now to cultivate key allies, and check too that your finances are robust enough to cope with unexpected demands.

The Nine of Wands is defensiveness in times of struggle rather than sure footing on the way into a powerful situation, and Foxy is possibly even afraid that his own position is called into question and trying to build a fence around himself while there is still time. With people in his own party spending public money on moats and paddocks, he is unlikely to find much sympathy outside parliament and the media, so he is seeking it inside the Westminster village, which (judging by the number of people queuing up to blame the Speaker for allowing them to spend £10,000 on mucking out the horses – mentioning no names, D. Davis) is also withholding support for this ruse to deflect the attention onto other people. Popular anger has gone beyond mere party politics, and playing with this fiery situation is pure defensiveness rather than going on the offensive with a clear conscience.

Subconscious – The Tower

Without warning the old order breaks down and chaos breaks loose. Upheaval, betrayal, and failure all threaten to shake your self-belief. This is a common card for people facing the challenges of mid-life, although love can create similar havoc at any age, as can politics, war and business. Such revolutions always lead to clearer understanding in the long term, however.

Foxy knows that this issue represents a challenge to his authority as much as it challenges Brown and his party. He needed to be seen to act – talk the talk – because he can’t actually act properly – walk the walk. This impresses some, but ultimately Cameron knows that there is destruction coming to him as well – that he can’t defend the indefensible in which he participated. If someone would take him to task over this, then there would be a bloodbath. Perhaps he is too afraid of this to do anything really constructive – like launch a comprehensive manifesto and talk about health, education, social security and all the other issues that the party has neglected in its trivial political skirmishes of late.

Obstacles – The Emperor

Reversed, the Emperor card can represent either difficulty with an outside authority or possibly indicate one’s own abuse of power. The reversed Emperor is a confused, immature bully. Look hard in the mirror before deciding to whom the card refers, because it is much easier to project these qualities onto others than to own up to them.

I fully admit that I hold Cameron in contempt and have done since he took office. I knew in my gut he would not have capacity to lead from a genuine position of being able to put forward a coherent, positive opposition, and would benefit from the stage of the electoral cycle that helped Labour in 1990-92. However this is him at his nadir – using a national issue that goes beyond partisan politics (at which I am prepared to admit he is fairly good) to manipulate public opinion in this dire and nauseating way. He confuses leadership with this cynical manipulation – and I feel in The Tower he knows it will backfire and wants to bring the House down with him, without facing up the idea that he is compromised himself and, in his own rules, he should be paying a lot of money back.

Overcoming these obstacles – III Wands

Success and recognition are yours for the taking. Therefore this is a good time for beginning new long-term enterprises, especially in the field of arts and crafts, although it may be some time before the financial rewards come to you. Meanwhile, simply enjoy exercising your talents and have faith that others will equally enjoy what you do.

The issue here is that Cameron enjoys his power too much and does not know how to act in the long-term interest of the country – he can’t cope with longer-term issues like what people really vote for. The Three is a decent card to overcome obstacles, but its transient, fiery nature does not construct any sort of lasting structure from which Foxy can govern, still less win at a national poll.

Outcome – Judgement

This card signifies the ending of one stage of life and beginning of another. It is a moment for reflection and self-judgement, measuring what you have achieved against the ideals that you were aiming for, because fresh opportunities to achieve them will arise. Armed with honest self-appraisal, you will be best poised to take advantage of them. Meanwhile, it pays to be generous in your judgement of others.

Judgement is that which is exerted upon you, whereas Justice you exert on others. Judgement means the reckoning Cameron needs – but possibly does not want – starting with Nick Clegg spurning what Foxy probably believed he would accept as a plausible means to boot out the government. Without this support it is seen as a narrow partisan move rather than an attempt to take the initiative. Clegg is not in this for personal gain, he is in this at least for the truth to come out. His people are tainted too – and he is loathe to support a pile of poo such as the current Conservative Party. So he’s out. Anyone else?

PART 2: THE SUN – WHO, WHAT, WHY, WHEN, HOW?

A similar spread to the above but done using reversals. All the cards came out reversed, which is unusual but should warn Cameron that support for this little attempt to manipulate and bully the system can go down as well as up.

Situation – Death, reversed

The reversed Death card is bad news, but rarely is its message catastrophic. It warns of lethargy, inertia and resistance to change, leading to exhaustion and standstill. Clinging too much to the past can lead to an inability to adapt to changing conditions. Beware of becoming a caricature of your old self.

The Sun believes it can manipulate this agenda to fulfil what it wants – but the public and other, wiser politicians (Clegg for one) are not fooled by this attempt to restore the Sun to the position of power-broker. At the last election, after it came out for Labour, the response from readers on the doorstep was to change to the Tory-supporting Daily Mail – this in working-class, inner-city Reading, Labour’s supposed heartland. If the paper believes it can manipulate public opinion and channel it into one partisan advantage, it is unwilling to face the real horror of public opinion it will unleash – and I don’t think it can cope with that.

Consciousness, or the image it believes it is projecting to its readership – Queen of Swords, reversed

The card represents bad luck through a treacherous, spiteful, malicious and bigoted person. They are skilled at manipulation and the subtleties of sarcasm. Beware of letting a person get too close.

Live by the sword, die by the sword. The destructive influence of the media in this country has opened up a pernicious and poisonous can of worms, but then other sectors are trying to pervert even this weapon in one direction when the public is poised to drive a bulldozer through the entire system. The Sun’s ability to pervert politics is what people are also cynical of, and if it pushes this too far it risks a shabby, deflated and incompetent government rather than one which can govern effectively on the real issues. It is acting in its own interests rather than in the genuine public interest and if it goes to an election at the moment it risks its own tip-for-the-top being decapitated for non-repayment of his gardening bills.

Attitude to the Conservatives – II Pentacles, reversed

Although there is a sense of unreality surrounding some current relationships, it is worth persevering – however, do watch out for ulterior motives in your partners. Get all agreements down in writing so that there can be no arguments later.

When you sup with the devil, use a long-handled spoon. The Sun is too close to one party to become the arbiter of any possible election, and it is not acting in the direction that the public actually want. It may be the driving force behind this, and it might be sincerely in support of Cameron’s own idea, but it cannot expect to change or arrest the will of the public or channel it into their pet potential government – this issue, uniquely in post-war history, goes beyond that cynical manipulation of voters. Cynical manipulation, after all, is how this came about in the first place.

Attitude to the Labour Party – Ace of Swords, reversed

The Ace of Swords represents danger, and the possible collapse of your dreams through arrogance and insensitivity. But it must be remembered that grim endings are needed before fresh beginnings. Plan for the long term.

The Sun needs to know that Labour are better prepared for government in general and at a general election the arena and issues are much different. Protest elections will not destroy the government – they will fragment and divide the opposition into squabbling independents who are unable to form a coherent alternative to Labour, who will no doubt simply deselect MPs deemed too toxic to continue and select new, fresher alternatives. It could be a pyrrhic victory for The Sun, and present the country with a government and a tattered remnant of an opposition which spells not only the end for Cameron but the end for The Sun as well.

Subconsciousness, or how the paper really believes the situation is – The Fool, reversed

This is an unlucky warning of imminent disaster unless the person it refers to pulls themselves together and starts acting responsibly. All the Fool’s worst qualities of fecklessness and lack of commitment are about to demand a heavy price. His confidence will prove hollow.

In the loss of the crucial backing of Nick Clegg, able to see through the manipulation of the cunning and sly Mr Fox, the Sun loses a crucial ally and the bipartisan plans it may have had to force Labour out. Clegg at least is acting in the national interest and has more to gain from a protest vote than he does from patronising Cameron’s little ruse. Thus the impact is lost – it is seen as a cynical move in favour of the Tories and it cannot gain the confidence of the electorate that, say, Clegg and Cameron did when they linked armed with Joanna Lumley, herself declaring for the Greens at this coming Euro-poll.

Obstacles – Queen of Cups, reversed

When reversed, the Queen shows her shadow side: arrogant, selfish, fickle, demanding, and unreasonable. As a lover she is both jealous and unfaithful, and she drains the energy and resources of everyone within her range.

The Sun’s obstacles are just that – this cynicism is apparent already in the number of MPs from all parties with their hands in the collective till, and this attempt to manipulate things in one party’s favour is likely to backfire against the backdrop of collective anger. It is a draining away of public support for one and an attempt to channel it in another’s favour – and yet the situation long ago went against the Tories as well, who are just as cruelly exposed as cheats and scroungers and, to boot, have much less reason to pick the public purse, since a lot of them are successful businessmen or wealthy in their own right. They cannot benefit from this without the public being blind. But the scales have fallen from all our eyes, and only those who are absolutely clean themselves can hope to challenge the system in general. And the leader of this snide campaign has a £680 claim for wisteria clearance owing to Her Majesty, never forget.

Overcoming obstacles – The Hermit, reversed

Reversed, the Hermit represents over-caution, enforced solitude, timidity and fear of the world and honestly interacting with others. His meditations are an indulgence and excuse for avoiding life, and he misses chances to help others with his knowledge through hesitation, clumsiness, and lack of empathy.

The Sun is too cowardly, in other words, to really open itself to the full flood of public opinion and give the people a genuine choice and say in their own affairs. It cannot overcome this properly – it may go back on its support for Cameron as people’s minds focus on the issues rather than the spin, for example – and it would not cope if it was eventually wrong; it would lose credibility and readership if it did get it wrong. As I have elucidated in prior posts regarding electoral fraud, my theory is that the media chooses and so much pressure is on the public to conform that, if they don’t, they find themselves manipulated and overruled by civil authorities rather than political parties. So The Sun is gambling that it might have to eat its words, and although such honesty is refreshing, it can also impose a dishonesty on our system that perpetuates rather than expunges the abuses of political life.

Outcome – IV Wands, reversed

Lack of co-operation from partners is likely to take the edge off life’s pleasures just now, but be patient and persevering. It is not a serious problem, just one that requires tact, diplomacy and a sense of your own worth.

The reaction of Nick Clegg has already done for the Sun’s campaign to be in any way cross-party. Clegg has seen the cunning cynicism of this a mile off, and has rejected advances to give Cameron and the Sun a cold shower. The Sun will not give up, but it risks inflaming rather than pacifying public opinion and has seriously undermined any attempts to clean this mess up and then allow people a free choice. The IV reversed is rocking the stability provided by the upright card, which is in any case as transient as the Wands always are. So it does not fill anyone with confidence and at a time where partisanship is toxic to all concerned, it just won’t wash with the electorate. Period.

Today's card is pulled using reversals, because the situation requires that we look at negatives as well as positives. The tarot provides for both, but most modern decks try and put positive spins on the cards, so that non-positive interpretations are ameliorated. This is largely due to the use of the tarot now as an advisory and interpretation-orientated tool, not as direct fortune-telling. However, when reading at arm's length for people who do not listen to bloggers like me, negative cards mean just that - negative outcomes. If tarot is advisory, then negative cards can be taken as warnings. But since the querent - those on whose behalf I am actually reading - is at arm's length, and not taking the advice given, the outcomes represent not just a warning that things could be difficult unless the querent takes the advice, but that this outcome is inevitable given the behaviour of the subject. So in these times, the ability to predict bad as well as good is something that we also need to accept.

From now on, since the Dragon Tarot provides reversed as well as upright meanings, I will use reversed cards much more often in my readings.

Today's card:

Justice reversed.

Loss, particularly in legal matters, injustice, and lack of recognition at work are all threatened by the Justice card reversed. Prepare to ride out a storm as false accusations, prejudice, and bullying may come your way, but try to see this as a test of  character.

It is not difficult to see where this bullying is coming from, given today's call from Vulpes Vulpes for a general election (more on that later). Foxy - with his MPs at least as bent as Gordon's - is trying to rally support for his "bent but not as bent" party, and the other parties could have flocked to his side. Erm, not quite. Without cross-party support, this looks directly cynical and the refusal of Nick Clegg to assist in this and make it into a genuine bi- or even tri-partisan crusade, VV just looks as if he is trying to confuse leadership with cynical posturing. The certain matter of £680-worth of wisteria clearance claimed on his ACA account means that this is going to backfire, quite painfully.

I wrote a post looking at the prognosis for a possible election and looking back, the Tarot is not to be sniffed at indeed. Although it is really a tool for analysis rather than prediction - at least if you are not fully psychic and completely open to spirit - there is a definite ability here to predict the future we would otherwise not fully be able to grasp. The symbolic aspect leaves interpretations open, but these cards do resonate - one reason being the presence of the Ten of Swords in May prompted a reason to look back at this spread because of the presence of a decisive card.

JANUARY - 2 CUPS - Loving union, teamwork.

Chances slim. Gordon will be wanting to consolidate and develop his agenda rather than cut and run.

This is based on the prospects for Labour, but Gordon needed to start cultivating the party as poll results began to fall again dramatically.

FEBRUARY - TEMPERANCE - Balance, harmony.

Gordon has begun to balance the books and although still slightly wobbly, he is beginning to get going on something major.

Having to hold the fort in the face of declining ratings but nothing happening significantly to upset the status quo, either for or against the Prime Minister.

MARCH - 7 SWORDS - Ego, internal politics.

Trickier time with things finely balanced. Gordon is beginning to overcome internal issues in the Labour Party - and squeeze his way past any other problems.

The beginning of difficulties - however still a balance and still stealing away any significant momentum from the other side.

APRIL - THE LOVERS - Soul mate, decisions.

An auspicious time with most of the previous problems overcome. The most likely time for a snap poll to be called.

Decisions, indeed - the difficulties of choices, represented also by the Lovers, as things turn sour in the McBride scandal and the Budget, which was not well-received by a media now increasingly turning off again. However underlying reasons for less concern, which is why this represents a strong union in adversity rather than a falling apart...

MAY - 10 SWORDS - Healing, second chance.

A positive spin on a card which is usually negative. Second chance doesn't bode well but looks like this is the most likely time for an election despite the European elections due a month later.

...such as what we all now know happened in May but were loath to predict.

The rest will be covered as and when they come to pass, but The Tower's presence suggests a disruption still definitely to come, so watch this space.

I'm sorry to have to apologise for my rather negative and vicarious coverage of the expenses scandal. I find political discourse more interesting when there is pageantry, but like our friend Alex, I do also feel that things have become too negative and too directly partisan where there should be much more holistic debate.

I have bottled this anger up for long enough - and my family and friends know the corrosive effect it has had on my personal life, just as Owlperson had to make himself known at points to keep me from doing myself in - and the reason I am largely getting at the Tories is for personal reasons. As a newcomer to the party in 2004 I believed they had a choice, but no-one stood up to the negativity of the media. No-one fought for what I - and most people who I ask about him outside politics - felt was a man "too nice to be prime minister" but possessed of the qualities I and many other non-political people feel our leaders should possess - an understated, gentle charm and a real ability to get on with his job while the maelstrom swirls around. Blair led us all on a merry dance, and caught the media in his dazzling headlights, but the figures in my report on electoral fraud speak for themselves - we were cheated in 2005 and are at risk of being cheated again, even if this whole expenses scandal mess does lead to an election being called.

What I'm enjoying about this tide of sleaze is that people who have benefited from the system are finally being called to account. I've changed my mind - I'm going one better than the Liberal Democrats - I am going to vote Green on June 4th (and LibDem if there are council elections in my ward, even though the incumbent Tory is one I helped to put there in a by-election in early 2005). I just can't stand this stale duopoly, which becomes a monopoly in the press when one party is judged more controllable and manipulable than the other. Howard suffered because, according to Owlperson, he wouldn't play the game, wouldn't be corrupted into playing this sordid game. Apparently (again, Owlperson's assistance is key here) he didn't play to win in 2005 when he could have done because to do so would have, in his opinion,   None of the various attempts to smear him over the actions of some of his family have worked to seriously damage him, either in office or, as like happened last October, as a harmless backbencher.

Not so Cameron, who must have the world record on talking the talk but has yet to convincingly walk the walk to make him in any way attractive to me as a potential prime minister. Just as people said about Tony Blair, he has no divine right to rule and must be held to account by the media and his own party if he is to pass these tests and become Prime Minister. Blair at least took the bulls by the horns and led Labour to a great victory - if my figures are not correct - because he did things in office as Leader of the Opposition. Our fat, lazy, friend Foxy can only dream of being so pro-active.

Sadly, if he is able to manipulate this crisis to his advantage when he too has been caught short, then British politics deserved to be ripped asunder from head to toe. The Greens are making a difference at European level by engaging with the status quo, while Cameron wants to hide from it and will it to disappear because it is an inconvenient diversion. But while Europe is not a huge issue in the era of the credit crunch and its pernicious effect on the country as a whole, Foxy will ultimately have to work in Europe and with Europe as Prime Minister. It is a test of his leadership that he can successfully engage with the debate. He needs to do something to earn my vote other than just win the original vote.

I will be voting either Labour or Conservative at the general election, but on current form and based on current "propaganda", it will be Labour. At least Labour can talk about their policies without shame and have a clear idea of what they want to do.

Sorry, Alex, if you think I've been too negative lately, then I wanted to set the balance back with a clearly argued article. I'm sorry, mate, I'd like to be positive about the Tories, but if you think this is still too backbiting and negative, then you have the freedom not to read my blog, and go back to your friends elsewhere who think Cameron is going to be the next Prime Minister - and wake up bitterly disappointed some day. Some of us are more discerning than partisan.

----------------

Card of the Day for 17 May

Eight of Wands

The Eight indicates suddent progress that is possibly too fast for comfort, so try to slow things down a little and avoid over-hasty decisions that you might later regret. This is an exciting and well-starred time with travel, new business partnerships, and long-term romance all likely - just bear in mind that life is not always this easy, and plan for those rainy days.

Things are gaining, not losing momentum, and although the word is the first wave has largely broken, the events are now spinning out of direct control - the verdicts begin and the issue moves into a new phase which is just as destructive and possibly more directly aimed at reducing the ability of people to manipulate this for their own ends.

Tory Julian Lewis on his decorating expenses:

Today's card came up reversed - in fact the whole pack was reversed, I was holding it upside down ;). This is just not looking good at all for anyone.

Labour's David Chaytor is the next victim. It is hard not to feel that this is a witch-hunt to rival those featured in The Crucible, but I just can't rouse myself to feel sorry for the people involved - even though the MP I helped campaign for in 2005, Rob Wilson, is so far in the clear over any excessive claims (he cites the fast train between Reading and Paddington as cause not to bother with the second home), he still used his blog for nasty political sniping unbecoming of serious political debate, and therefore I don't even feel anything for him any more. He also spams my letterbox at home with Christmas cards - not even sent to a constituent or member of his association - which are little more than glorified advertisements for the Conservative Party and his wonderful and glorious reign over the electorate of Reading East. They usually get torn up and thrown in the bin. Waste of money Rob - waste of my money. Can anyone say "communications allowance"?

I have decided to support the LibDems as the most palatable of the minor parties to give Labour and the Conservatives a boot. This is a real challenge to me - I have always voted "one or the other", not the "third party", and I did so want to vote Labour this time round - but I'm not currently a member of any party so I currently have, in Michael Howard's words, a Right to Choose.

Knight of Wands reversed

Disruption, conflict, quarrels, and sudden upheavals, either geographical or emotional, are indicated. Expect the painful breaking of old ties, either because of your own fickleness or someone else's.

In which case the card refers also to me, but this is the wave of support for minor parties, with UKIP gaining strength over the BNP, whose toxic reputation may well be a bit too much. Otherwise, this is simply the ongoing conflict up above, a deadly and losing battle against a tsunami of allegations, probes, claims and the destruction of a sitting political elite. The doomed battle between Loki and Heimdall at Ragnarok continues, with the outcome painfully obvious to those watching from below.

I'm actually beginning to enjoy this, personally. All these new Tory MPs who got in off the back of the hard work of Michael Howard and then ditched him once they were safely over the threshold are getting their karmic order of the boot now. The ones I campaigned for - particularly John Redwood and Rob Wilson - are largely in the clean - but the rest of the nest of vampires that have enjoyed the fruits of 2005 without really acknowledging who won them their seats are getting searched out.

Nadine "No Smoke Without Fire" Dorries is the latest to get into trouble over a mystery hotel room receipt. Allegedly - according to the Daily Mail -

"Ms Dorries, the MP for Mid Bedfordshire, said that on New Year's Eve 2006, when she is alleged to have claimed the cost of a hotel room, she 'held a party and cooked a 12 bird roast and... blogged the entire evening'.

An invoice - charged to 'Mr N Dorries' - had been submitted by her PA, she said, but said it must have been a mistake and in any case had not been paid by the Commons."

Prior to that, Ms Dorries added to her blog...

''There is one thing I know about me better than anyone else. I never do anything I know to be wrong and I have common sense by the bucketful,' she wrote.'

Obviously not enough bucketfuls to know that there is no smoke without fire. Labour's dodgy emails notwithstanding (unforgiveable when there are plenty of other, nicer emails I and anyone on their email list or Twitterfeed gets in terms of policy), Dorries' private life was the subject of journalistic gossip anyway and reading the thing objectively you had to ask - there isn't normally anything that surfaces without something going on. I complained last autumn about MPs using their blogs for character assassination of their opponents or their leaderships rather than informed, dignified and intelligent discourse.

Now it seems Ms Dorries has shopped herself as not even knowing where she was on 31 December 2006. Perhaps the electorate in Mid-Bedfordshire and the hardworking activists that selected her and campaigned for her might like to vouch for her presence during the campaign too as maybe she has other blank spots as to her whereabouts. Perhaps if she does sue Labour's spin doctors that bit of amnesia would be taken into account.

I would like to read for Ms Dorries, so let's see.

Situation

Ten of Wands - A card denoting a burden placed upon the querent and an oppressive weight digging into their backs. Dorries has to prove that these allegations are false and untangle her other issues as well rather than face the fate of other wayward MPs. This is an intolerable situation and needs resolution fast before it cripples her as well as others.

As it appears to the public

The Tower - The last days of Sodom and Gommorah seems to have come to "Troughminster", and even I, a defender of the parliamentary faith to the last, draw the line at this point. I have always believed our system was good but there were some people who were bent. Now unfortunately I - along with a lot of other people - believe the situation has become the other way round - there are good people, but the system itself has been broken in two and needs to be drastically restored to what it was (at least) before these catastrophic rules were liberalised in 2004-odd. Owlperson would go further and restore them to what it was before the 1832 Reform Act, but I fear we already have made it back to Eatenswill, so perhaps that's not entirely necessary.

As it appears to Ms Dorries

Judgement - They're all coming up. This is a reckoning with her and her conscience. She got off lightly during Smeargate because she appeared to be the innocent victim of nasty slurs, not someone who can submit an invoice in her name by mistake and not remember where she was at the time. Karmic judgement always comes back to haunt you, and it just has...and she knows this.

As it appears to her electorate

Eight of Pentacles - A more sober card and at least a more constructive verdict. This is representative of hard graft, and it looks as if Ms Dorries might in the end survive because Mid Beds - I lived there, I know it - is so dyed in the wool Tory territory it would elect a fokssss if it stood with a blue rosette on. They already have (Ms Dorries is yer typical Vulpes Vulpes) but this is progress towards a constructive solution. It may construct something other than Ms Dorries wants, but she has to learn that you can't really get very far in politics solely lying on your back.

As it really is

King of Wands - The King is in control, and although he can direct things, he lacks the stable control of the more grounded suits. Wands represent fire - the short duration of a flaring match. Dorries may think she can ride this one out - she had the public's sympathy for what happened during Smeargate, but she must take care not to go out in a blaze of glory by calling undue attention to her lack of attention to her whereabouts on New Year's Eve.

Roots of the situation

Knight of Cups - The Knight represents the development of his suit from the innocent page into the experienced warrior. But the Knight of Cups is a figure who enjoys the thrill of the chase much more than he should do - the goal is secondary to the means used. Wading through this, Ms Dorries got herself into a situation where she didn't think she would have to account for herself - and gets pilloried as a result.

Seeds of the situation

The Chariot - Too far, too fast, too soon. There is too much energy in this situation for things to be brought to a halt, and more movement is fed into the system with every titbit like this. It is still destined to continue in the way it is going. Let's burn some more rubber, say I.

Advice to Ms Dorries

Two of Cups - Be more honest, take the situation seriously and come clean on what you actually did, Nadine. There needs to be more intimacy between her and her associates, and there needs to be more expression of regret rather than simply claiming she has too much common sense. She needs to be honest with the other person, which in her case is her Association and electorate.

Warning to Ms Dorries

Six of Pentacles - She can't go back. No-one can - there is no more place for this blithe arcadia, there is no more trough, no more horse much, no more 12 bird roasts. The damage to the old world is fatal, and this card represents that painful nostalgia that MPs who have been caught out must feel when they look back to when these rules were instated.

Solution

Knight of Pentacles - Bluntly, keep more control of your money and where you spend it. Ms Dorries has been caught out not knowing what was submitted in her name, and what she was doing submitting an invoice for something that allegedly didn't exist I don't know but it doesn't show that she has that much common sense at all. Humility also comes along with this card, and cultivating current opinion as well as one's own pursestrings is imperative with this card.

Outcome

Knight of Wands - Another Knight, and the Knight of the fiery suit of Wands is what will happen - another MP trying to defend the indefensible. Dorries cannot and will not control herself, and, perhaps more clearly than Cameron, shows just what knots the people in power will tie themselves in in order to justify themselves. This approach is not what is necessary in the Knight of Pentacles, and suggests a continuation of bluster and blame - meaning the Tories will suffer as much as Labour are.

And today's card is...

...drum roll, cos it's a biggie...

...Ten of Swords.
This is the end for quite a lot of things - the ruin of what has gone before and the decisive and catastrophic ruin for those who have made their beds and lain in them for quite a long time. Things go ballistic, and the end is reached for everything and everyone involved in this miserable situation.

But after that, usually comes another beginning, as in all life - and deaths. Expect big things to happen and the transformation to take place, and although things can no longer return to normal, there will be other things that spring up from this moment in time. Just like the manure that is the symbol of this whole issue, sh*t is used as fertiliser for new life.

Good luck, Foxy. Good luck, El Gordo. You are both going to need it in bucketfuls.

While I was at work Elliot Morley has now been sacked from the Labour Party.

Nice one. More please.

Quickie card -

The Moon

Reading without notes, the dragons are baying to the moon and there is a sense of the danse macabre - the scandal has claimed another victim, following on from Andrew Mackay this morning, and I can't say the tarot looks unhappy at this. Meanwhile there'll be more; the dragons don't quite look satisfied or sated yet.

Andrew Mackay has resigned from his position as an aide to Vulpes Vulpes, his fellow fokssss. He is a local MP to us, and is matched in Wokingham by a third vulpine, John Redwood. Not too unhappy at this - what he did with fourth foxy Julie Kirkbride is just unspeakably bent, and how he can claim that nothing "stands out" in his expenses claim I'm not sure - but he did at least help sniff out victory in Reading East, for which I will be always be grateful. We weren't anywhere near defeat, but there were people there who really actually would have preferred noble defeat to a solid victory, so it was helpful to me and others who actually wanted to win to have him endorse our goal as within reach. Sadly this feral nose of his wasn't good enough to smell out the naked abuse of this issue here.

Again, not a Parliament article without a reading for this, and the news Douglas Hogg is facing having his whip withdrawn over refusing to pay for his moat.

Questions for Mackay and Hogg

The Star. Like the return of spring after winter, the Star signals rebirth in any or all aspects of life, and the relaxing of restraints. After an illness, the Star card indicates the return of health. After a period of frustration in relationships or work, it promises the return of joy and the blossoming of new partnerships. This is a good time to begin any new venture.

There is release in this situation for both of them from constraints imposed from outside, and it seems to me that their official roles were chafing somewhat. A curious card for people swindling the taxpayers, but a suggestion that for both of them their roles in the party and as an official MP may not have been that comfortable to begin with and they were - subconsciously - daring Foxy to sack them as a result of these revelations.

Answers from Cameron

Four of Swords. A temporary relief from struggle. Use solitude to plan a way forward because the chances are that much will be demanded of you again soon. This can refer to either health or your personal life. Remember, with hindsight all the best achievements involve triumph over adversity.

As the release comes for the two wayward MPs, the release is similar for Cameron, freeing him from potential trouble. He can't fully relax - he needs to keep moving if he is to avoid finding himself in the Prime Minister's perilous situaition - but he can remove two thorns from his side and ponder the way forward without the problems caused by these particular cases.

Questions for Cameron

The High Priestess. Inspiration, learning, mystery, understanding of the inner workings of life, enlightenment and serenity are all represented by this card, with a hint that serenity can sometimes lead to emotional detachment from daily events. Often this card implies that hidden spiritual factors are currently affecting your life, so look carefully within, or consult a respected advisor.

In a sense Cambo is trying to rise above this situation and establish himself as an inquisitor rather than a perpetrator of the injustice and greed that is going on. However, he cannot really do this effectively without deepening his range and beginning to shore up his party's reputation now that the political agenda he has pursued for the last several months (if not three and a half years) has rebounded on him as well. He must begin to concentrate on substance and deepening the Tory message, or be dragged under by the tide engulfing politics. Michael Howard was in the same position before the European elections last time when the media decided to try and rock the anti-politics boat for very little external reason indeed - he cannot afford to go the same way under much a more genuine anti-establishment movement with much more genuine causes.

Answers from Mackay and Hogg

King of Swords. In astrology the character of Saturn in his benign aspect closely resembles that of the King of Swords. He represents power, authority, and the law, splitting complex arguments with the edge of his sword. His judgements can at times seem lacking in tolerance of human frailty, but are never unfair. The card usually represents an authority figure that the querent can look to for justice.

The two wayward MPs now hold the balance of power - if they make a fuss they could rock the boat for Cameron further. It may be that the public will not side with them but they could manipulate things that they feel released from to the detriment of Vulpes Vulpes, who is trying to deepen himself without losing the tactical game to a seemingly moribund government. The Tories always seem to me that despite their high poll ratings - which are now on a downslope again due to this issue - fragile and still insecure. This may make it easier, not more difficult, for disaffected MPs to make their voices heard more clearly if they are released from having to be officials in the party or parliament and this could be a dangerous side-effect of a zealous campaign to clear the party of miscreants. The sacking of Howard Flight rebounded on Michael Howard - so indiscriminate clearing of deadwood may also concentrate minds against a leader looking like he is clearing bedblockers to insert his own cronies in safe positions - such as Douglas Hogg's constituency seat.

Direction for MPs

Justice. Justice reveals a judgement in your favour as you receive your just rewards. This can be uncomfortable for those who have strayed beyond morality, but usually this card signals good fortune for you and a happy outcome to current negotiations. The card signals a good time for drawing up contracts, settling outstanding debts and obligations, and laying foundations for the future.

There's a risk of interpreting this card too much in one favour or another. Mackay and Hogg may feel they are being punished when no rule or law has been broken (as it emphatically has in the case of Elliot Morley, caught claiming mortgage interest for a mortgage already paid off). But they seem for the moment to be guilty as charged and while this may diminish any challenge they throw down to Big Foxy, they still have here a moment where their difficulties could leave a legacy of more strife for the political party in question, not less.

Direction for leadership

Ace of Wands. The Ace of Wands represents the beginning of some great new practical venture or career. The time is right for putting your boldest ideas into action, pushing back the boundaries of possibility and sharing your enthusiasm with the world. Now, when everything is flowing your way, is the time to exercise your talents, stake out your territory, and show the world what you can do.

A strike while the iron is hot from Cameron to try and solve the problems. It may not be a total coup - the damage in the polls is done and he flatters himself if he can turn people back round solely by sacking a few MPs and making token gestures; people want policies which he can't give them - but it is action that shows he is willing to tackle a political crisis. If he applied this dexterity to policies perhaps people would not be so cynical and would not be turning to other more substantial parties with policy agendas and "solutions" of their own.

Direction for party

The Hierophant. Providing comfort, security, the wisdom of the ages, and generosity in others' time of need are among the many virtues of the Hierophant that make him someone to turn to in troubled times. But inflexibility - a lack of openness to change - can often negate these virtues. Too great a reverence for the past can become hostility toward all change, and then the Hierophant symbolises an obstacle to growth. He can also indicate marriage or other lasting union.

The strict nature of Cameron's actions may help in the short term but there needs to be a genuine organic development for the party to start to recover the respect of the public in the long-term. Before the issue broke so violently, they were Not-Labour. Now they are And-Labour - they have not gained from Labour's difficulties because the abuses are much worse and much more redolent of extravangance - chandeliers? tennis courts? moats? and the Leader doesn't need to abuse expenses because he is worth £3 million. The party needs to focus on wisdom and security of purpose, rather than just look like it has reverted to the pre-Thatcher fossiliation of the ultra-rich and their commensurate lifestyles.

Solution

VII Pentacles. The Seven foretells a truly rewarding time. The possibilities before you are quite awesome, but do think in the long-term. Decide who you are and what you would like to be remembered for by your family and friends. The choices you face really are that important. Destiny is at work.

There is hope of regrowing some of the lost ratings, but the party is still only a possibility, not a real potentiality. They are still developing something solid, and the solution is still to keep on going with this in the same direction. It is taking a long time - I hope it is worth it in the end. 

Outcome of skirmish

IX Cups. Victory and success come your way as several long-held dreams come true. Share your good luck with others, and it will be multiplied. This is a good time for looking forward and making fresh plans for the future, because your confidence will be infectious. Several new and stimulating friends are likely to enter your life.

In this case the situation is solved to the satisfaction of most, but it is not the real transcendence of mind over matter that the party needs. It needs to solve this problem of haemorrhaging voter confidence in both sides, and it is fair enough to suggest that Cameron has solved the problem for the moment, but he did not solve it before it became a problem, nor did he answer to why the Conservative Party had tolerated this situation in the first place. The image is so flimsy it has been dented by this, and that substance needs to come about before the situaiton will improve.

Outcome of war

IV Wands. It is now time for a well-deserved rest and the enjoyment of good company. Your plans were well-laid, so you can allow yourself to bask for a while as you see your ideas take shape in reality. This could also be a good time to consider moving house, or formalising a romantic attachment. Enjoy this time, but don't allow complacency to set in.

The structure emerges and the party returns to solid ground, but there isn't any card here that really gives even the illusion of the solidity people crave. It is all about image - who appears in the right, who gets the oneupmanship in a crisis, who is the best at promoting their agenda...and nothing that the public does will persuade the parties - or the media - to get back to policy detail. The structure and complacency here is that of a house of cards - and a strong wind is blowing again, just as it was prior to the 2004 elections.

Today's card continues the theme of solving and resolving the expenses crisis/scandal/whatever (I am surprised that no-one has suggested a moniker such as Expensesgate or Cash-For-Bath-Plugs-And-Horse-Sh*t, but never mind). The previous two cards, The King and Love, suggest to me that the party leaders, first Vulpes Vulpes and then El Gordo, have variously moved to try and staunch the haemorrhage of confidence that the public have in their elected representatives, after the 39%-26% poll in Tuesday's times.

Today's card is:

Happy Ever After

Cico Books' Dragon Tarot, which I have returned to today after using the Wisdom of Avalon Oracle Cards to the outer limit of their potential, is the artwork for The Star writ large - there is no border or name on this card, so I decided to use it in the deck as a marker card that the current activity or trend has reached its high - or low - water mark. In this case, the omens are favourable, a sign of the parties getting to grips with their issues in ways that will transform politics as we know it - though the results may not be seen for a while until after the European elections.

Unlike The World, which is the transcendent end of one cycle and the beginning of another, this card simply marks the climax of the affair, the denouement or the apostheosis of the issue. The situation becomes so important that it assumes a dominant position in the arena of, in this case, State. No other issue is important for now, no attempt can be made to deflect or bury it until it is satisfactorily dealt with by all concerned. Each party will go through its own transformation; each party realises the danger it is in and has to rise to the challenge. The struggle intensifies such that everything else becomes of secondary importance and must wait until this issue has been successfully concluded.

For the government, the time has come to make good on promises to institute reforms taking control of expenses away from Parliament. For the opposition, the time has come to stop playing petty politics with the issue and confront their own lack of balance and solidity on a number of fronts and either put up something that will stop the leakage of their respectability as well as Labour's or shut up the main pretender to the throne for another leadership cycle.

Good luck guys - you're gonna need it.

Iain Martin blogs today on PMQs and the ins and outs of whether Parliament really is sovereign.

Card reading? Yes please.

Questions from Cameron

The Dog: "Loyalty, sincerity, unconditional love."

The loyalty here is to parliamentary tradition, not surprising from a Tory but surprising that, since Cameron has begun to work on new rules for his own party, he does not want the imposition of an independent rules commission. The "sovereignty of Parliament" here is sacrosanct, but wasn't it that that got us into this mess? Perhaps Vulpes Vulpes has more to hide than just his party's shame. Or he may be wary of committing himself fully to something he can't justify spending any money on. Since he wants to abolish the Electoral Commission and return control of the voting system to the Home Office without maintaining a watchdog, it's not surprising he thinks, ultimately, the poachers are going to make fair gamekeepers as well.

Answers from Brown

The Wind Faery: "Thoughts, words, intellectual analysis."

What Brown does best - analysis without reaching deeper into the emotional pits of his understandings. However, the faery here looks blissfully ecstatic, as if she has elevated herself above the wider world and is released from past physical and emotional torments. Ascent is possible but whether things Brown proposes will ever get done is the salient point. He has so far failed to come up with new rules - can he really do anything else to alleviate the pressure? This suggests he may still be able to.

Possibilities arising from this exchange

Restriction.

This is a good card in this situation, since to me it says that anything proposed now will be a good thing and be successfully established. The need for restrictions is all too clear, so there is a definite prospect of the construction of a body to constrain and restrict MPs' ability to run the system to their own specifications.

Ongoing developments

Trust.

This idea of Brown's might definitely restore the confidence that Parliament - and perhaps even his government - has lost; it may not be a surprise that the Tories will oppose it (they seem to work on narrow political grounds so much they don't often look as if Vulpes Vulpes could ever be comfortable with answering questions rather than asking them). Something allows things to return to a position where the public feel more able to put their trust in their representatives - hopefully to the detriment of the BNP.

Short term outcome

Merlin: "Alchemy, justice, balance."

The situation does provide a good dialectic to develop and enhance the quality of political life, though the smoke coming from the dragon's nostrils suggests to me there will be a time of restructuring, possibly even difficulties, before this is reached. The system needs to be melted down and reshaped, and this will be what is really needed, rather than just a quick fix geared towards petty political ends.

Long term outcome

The Stag: "Pride, leadership."

A restoral of confidence in the system and the emergence of a purer and more genuine political debate freer from sleaze and scandal. Parliament's reputation may currently be damaged, but this does not represent a catastrophic failure in democratic norms nor in the ability of the system to evolve into something less nasty and tainted than before.

Moving on from yesterday, the Card of the Day today is less "holistic" and more strident.

The King

Man, authority, male sexual energy, things pertaining to the law, justice.

This is clearly the continuing fallout from this week's revelations of MPs' expenses claims in the Daily Telegraph, with yesterday's building of consensus (probably pertaining to Vulpes Vulpes shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, and then making it clear up its own manure...) replaced by a stricter and harder edge to the crisis with judgement and verdict coming down against the guilty parties.

To ignore the BNP at this stage is too dangerous to both main parties and the Liberal Democrats (who are the next victim of the Torygraph on the rampage), and offers up the spectre of Southampton – where the Tories, trying desperately to sweep UKIP under the carpet essentially destroyed their progress towards an election win in 2005, or more probably about 250-70 seats. So is this too – now that the damage has been done to both main parties – Cameron’s Southampton moment? And who will benefit more? Labour, because the BNP will take Tory votes away, or the Tories, because Labour will be fighting the BNP in their heartlands and allow them through the middle?

Let’s see, shall we? This is a Wisdom of Avalon spread, so with the book giving more positive, affirmative spins on the cards, I’ll do it without the meanings written in the book to get a more equivocal slant on the issues as I did this morning with Lord Tebbit’s interventions.

Situation

The Queen: “Woman, fertility, feminine power, sexuality, friendships.”

The Queen here suggests that the situation is ripe and pregnant with possibilities and also fraught with danger that the BNP has found an unusually fertile ground for its message. It has also prepared and patiently waited for this moment rather than, like UKIP, angling for its position over the years, messing around with its leadership and being damaged by splinter groups such as Veritas which largely did for the party’s admittedly small prospects at the last election. The BNP has been more careful to incubate and cultivate support and ground itself in the localities where it is most active rather than reach beyond its grasp into the national realm. Thus it believes its time has come without too much fuss and bother previous to this moment.

BNP public impact on Labour

The Wind Faery: “Thoughts, words, intellectual analysis.”

The BNP has forced Labour into a defence of its principles and challenges them on grounds of the presence of a socialistic alternative. The party has an appeal to northern voters, and a stronghold in the north as an alternative version of socialism with a racist and quasi-fascist bent to it which is more corporatist than neo-liberal. It is fighting on Labour’s turf where the Conservatives still daren’t go. So Labour are having to think hard about convincing people with arguments as to why they should reject this seductive social-ism, rather than being able to rely on using the party against the Tory opponents like it was able to do with UKIP at the last round of Euro-elections.

BNP public impact on the Conservatives

Partnership.

The Tories are facing a different challenge – how to appeal to potential BNP voters while not being led down the same avenue of racism and squalid xenophobia. The Tories are already uncertain about their position in Europe and have little option – other than rejoining the EPP – other than to collaborate with European variants of the BNP if they want any say in the European Parliament that befits their standing as the largest British delegation in Strasbourg. The BNP could be used against Labour in the north, but like in Scotland where the second party is now the SNP, the Tories cannot gain from a third party stealing votes from them in areas which will be crucial to a general election victory, so they must resist the temptation to see them as a convenient battering ram in Labour’s northern provinces and start actively convincing the public to vote Conservative rather than Labour or BNP.

BNP public impact on the Liberal Democrats

The Merlin [sic] – “Alchemy, justice, balance.”

The Liberal Democrats have historically gained perhaps proportionately more from Labour’s distress over the past few elections than the Tories have, particularly again in areas where the BNP is likely to pick up seats. They too risk the prospect of having to use the BNP against Labour, but here there is much more ability to fight the BNP on territory where they can do much better than either Labour or the Conservatives. Balance and justice can be used here to gain from Labour’s problems and they can justly position themselves as a better alternative than the BNP for northerners’ votes. Thus they stand again to gain from Labour’s problems, or at least maintain their representation in the face of the onslaught of the problematic last few weeks and months.

Underlying reality for Labour

Burden.

Labour have the burden of proving that they are still competent enough to govern and win and maintain their standing in the European Parliament even if they cannot improve it. If they still control  the north, as recent council elections prove, then they must show that this quiet support can still hold up under the spotlight of a national election. The burden is such that the national picture depends on their ability to hold on to what they have; it is a difficult task in the current climate but the collapse in areas where the BNP threaten them is in the Conservative vote, so this is a burden that is comparatively light compared to their old adversaries.

Underlying reality for the Conservatives

The Stag: “Pride, leadership.”

Pride does come before a fall, but this suggests that Conservative fortunes can be improved and renewed by strong, solid leadership. Not a lot of that around at the moment – Cameron has all the air of a man with his hand in the biscuit tin promising to spit out what he and his Shadow Cabinet have already swallowed – but we all here at the Parliament of Fowls live in hope that something might be shown to challenge and not just ignore the BNP.

Underlying reality for the Liberal Democrats

The Grail Knight: “Romance, illusion, seeking the sacred.”

The Liberals usually gain from situations like this, so their campaign can and will continue to unfold understanding that they are a beneficiary of the process (as today’s Times poll shows) rather than a victim.

Roots of the situation

The Owl: “Deception, wisdom.”

Reading the words on the card, deception comes from the image the BNP has projected – which is deceptively potent at the moment – and the wisdom suggests that the threat has been noted soon enough that the party leaders could begin to formulate strategies to avoid the disaster that UKIP wrought on the 2004 round of elections. In this place the Owl suggests and promises a more controlled and directed approach than the desperation faced by the Tories in particular when the threat from UKIP manifested itself so quickly and so devastatingly in the last two weeks of the campaign. This time the threat has, owlishly, been seen coming and can at least be dealt with if anyone has the moral strength at the moment to do so.

Seeds sown by the situation

The Wasp: “Anger, retaliation, jealousy.”

The problem  seems to be that the bankruptcy of the process is now threatening some sort of retaliation and overreaction to the threat which does seem to suggest that a Southampton moment could still be on the agenda. Although the owl saw it coming, there is no way at the moment either main party is going to be in any fit shape to deal with the anger of the voters, and the BNP as an insurgent is poised to benefit from this disastrous situation without drastic measures applied to drastic times.

Wild card – UKIP intervention

The Cat: “Independence, healthy boundaries.”

UKIP are keeping themselves distant from both parliament (although they do, in Bob Spink, have an MP now) and the current debate and keeping their campaign sotto voce. They do this not from any common cause with the BNP – except again as an insurgent, in tandem with the Greens – but from a need to protect their own MEPs’ electoral interests and keep their own moral ground safe. They stand not necessarily to gain – their profile is much lower and they were not able to keep their 2004 momentum going – but to hold things steady and hope for a big anti-establishment backlash.

Words said against the BNP

Love.

Wherever Love is, there is action to heal and unite, and although these are mere words, it does help that the BNP’s ideology is distasteful and anti-Love enough to make sure that there is a common cause against them. UKIP made a big impact because they resisted the lure of casual racism. Whether the BNP can do the same depends on the modernisation of the message, and it is significant that this means that the threat may be a paper one – and that by the time of the actual poll their appeal will have diminished significantly enough because the other parties can at least maintain that they may be greedy – but at least they are not racist.

Actions taken against the BNP

Forgiveness.

This tells me that there is more to come, and that the campaign is not over for the main parties. They have time to mend the broken relationship with the public, through application of strength and the political will to combat the BNP. Some papers saw UKIP as an acceptable alternative last time (the Daily Express went from championing Howard six weeks before the 2004 poll to advocating a vote for UKIP on the day itself) but no-one would dare to suggest a vote for the BNP as a vote against sleaze and corruption. This is a potent weapon as the media this time is united against the BNP, and although the forgiveness may not be of the main parties, there are still acceptable protest votes that don’t involve poisonous xenophobia and outright bigotry.

Results

The Butterfly: “Beauty.”

Words and actions combine to find a solution that involves a challenge to the BNP while still emphasising the wrongdoing of the current political landscape. This points to more of a transcendent occurrence rather than a deadly blow: a solution found that enhances, not destroys, the political process.

Direction

Wealth.

The situation now seems dire and the BNP challenge seems as much a credible alternative than the current self-destructing establishment. But the changes now tend in the direction of enrichment and enhancement – there are some changes brewing, given the dangerous omen of the Wasp, but ultimately the situation improves in a direction that is currently unintelligible but ultimately solvable for those worried that the BNP will be attractive to those who despair of the current hysteria gripping Westminster.

Solution

The Swan: “Transformation, trusting the psychic gifts.”

In the context of politics, I said that the Swan is a symbol of masculine aggression and regal assertion; for those familiar with the tarot, this card for me corresponds to The Emperor in terms of authoritative power and potent actions. It also suggests that the solution is in the transformation of the political situation and the quick and rapid development of the parties’ current programmes. The politics has to end, and I suspect a return to policies would sort out who is the winner here. There is no longer any place for anyone without a direct and definite message, and if that means the Liberal Democrats top the poll, so be it.

Outcome

The Eagle: “Spirit, integrity, connection to the angelic realm.”

There is nothing now that can be solved with games or empty words, or smears, or counter-smears. These masculine cards demonstrate a solution, as yet unseen, that resolves and determines the direction for the next year, rather than continue the base pettiness of the Wasp which is merely feeding the BNP. The parties are serious about this – they have to be – but they are all variously discredited. Regardless, male power overcomes the seductive viper in the breast of the body politic, and here the winner will be the one which moves to solidy and substantiate the programme rather than continue the baiting and back-biting which has cost the process its general dignity and respectability. Nonetheless, it is possible and likely that politics will grow from this decomposing mulch, rather than just sink into it leaving the mulch to take over. I think Owlperson is trying to tell me what will happen, but I don’t think anyone reading this would be ready to listen or willing to believe it, so I will leave it to the next few weeks to unfold.

Lord Tebbit is telling people not to vote for either main party - not even the Conservatives. He has not endorsed any other party - which would leave him open to expulsion - but Lord Semi-Housetrained-Polecat (he is actually a polecat spirit) has withdrawn his support from the Tories at the European elections to send a warning shot across the bows of the corrupt establishment. 

Quick reading for this, as ever.

Question - Wealth: The issue, as ever, is money. A simple and direct element which is independent of the book meaning for this card, a fortunate omen of abundance. Perhaps rather too fortunate for Lord Tebsy.

Answer - The Swan: "Transformation, trusting the psychic gift." Swans are regal birds, but they are also quite fierce and aggressive. Tebbit is beating his breast in the manner not just of a penn swan but a gorilla making a swift move to admonish his juniors. He also has real authority and weight and this is a dangerous omen because it carries the power of being someone who Cameron cannot afford to mess with.

Direction - The Stag: "Pride, leadership." Another weighty and aggressive card, a large, powerful animal able to damage things significantly for those who get in the way of his antlers. Cameron should be relieved that the horns are not aimed squarely at him, but this is dangerous as this stag still has clout and is not as easily turned into fresh venison as Stuart Wheeler was.

Solution - "Focus": Necessary, as I said earlier, to get back to basics in sorting out the policy direction for both parties but especially for the Conservatives who seek to establish themselves as an alternative government. Advice to get on with it and stop messing about.

Outcome - The Dragon: "Power, strength". A final, dangerous and supremely angry card. Either the leaderships reassert themselves, or the dragon intervenes to destabilise them further and lead to a destructive force. The poll this morning show that Tebbit will have resonance with a lot of voters - probably why the intervention has happened now, after the dangerous fall in support for the Conservative party below 40% - but also that a strike from this beast will be a knockout blow for anyone who dares to challenge the forces at work. A worrying and challenging outcome which should force Focus on those who currently lack it.

Interesting times are on their way, in other words.

On with the substance of today's card, from the wonderful set "The Wisdom of Avalon Oracle Cards".

Owlperson's lairy opinion of the Water Faery card notwithstanding, this set is more suited, like all oracle sets, for shorter readings, one-card pulls and upbeat affirmation rather than serious, deep and troubling readings, such as I'm getting now. The difficulty with oracles are that they are devised for readings that often rely on angelic messages to give the querent some feeling of direction. I'm rather a traditionalist in this and prefer the more varied and sometimes doom-laden cards that fall with a proper tarot set, though some oracles are now including darker cards in with their lighter friends, and it is often a good introduction to tarot for sceptics who feel the images of Death, the Devil and the Tower to be too much too soon.

Today's card for politics -

Love

This marker reminds you to show kindness and compassion to all whom you meet on your path - be it a beggar on a street corner, a co-worker, a family member, an animal, or a plant whose leaves need pruning.

This marker asks you to shift perception from yourself as a solitary person on the earth to one who's part of a living system. Love is what made you, so keep it flowing. Remember to receive love as well. Ask yourself, "Am I blocking love?"

This marker reminds you that you're as connected to all of life as it is to you, and that you're responsible to be the steward of the love of the God/Goddess. Love is without conditions - it is respectful, mindful, sees all life as sacred, and acts in accordance. Love reminds you that this very planet is a living being.

Love is the very essence of the Divine in you, and it sees the Divine in others. This is the time to see through the eyes of Love and always think before you act, "What would Love do?" The answer will always bring you extraordinary power.

This marker is a very fortunate and transformative omen.

In many ways the political establishment is paying their price for arrogance and decadance in previous years. I am currently reading the Dragonlance saga, more specifically the trilogy "Legends", which follows time-travelling Caramon and Raistlin back three hundred years to the time of a great cataclysm which ripped apart their world and forced humankind to reorientate their values and beliefs because man believed he could challenge, usurp and destroy the Gods in a quest against evil. Usual fantasy stuff, but the series was written in 1986 - yet the harbinger of the Cataclysm was the destruction of a single tower in the main temple of the priests who were challenging the Gods. It seems that 9/11 was a powerful motif in fantasy and sci-fi fiction in the years leading up to that mini-cataclysm for us. What is emphasised in this book is how the people living at the time of the cataclysm saw the gods' warnings, but believed they were sent by the evil they were trying to destroy rather than warnings from the good gods who were angry at their hubris, arrogance and attempts to claim their divinity in a shabby, commercialised and decadent world.

In this sense, the Love here shows firstly that both parties are in the same position. Neither party can claim the moral high ground, and the voters do not see Cameron's point that this is Labour's rules - which undoubtedly at least some of them are - which are being exploited. Michael Howard did promise to reform the postal voting system while still encouraging the Conservative party to - legally - farm postal votes. But here we are talking about money-grubbing, and while not illegal, it's certainly immoral, and recognised as so. All that's happened today is that the voters have delivered their verdict, and the Tories cannot - as I feared - weasel out of this solely by it being their mates pursuing the MPs and by having the absurd agenda that the rules are immoral but they exist so why not help oneself? Howard was just being electorally pragmatic. But when money is involved, it just looks craven and greedy.

So Love is there in a negative sense. What oracle decks frequently do is advise rather than foretell, since they are full of good cards which affirm and guide rather than doom. But here it is a cleansing, healing, loving process. The BNP, like UKIP, may get a foothold in the European Parliament. While that is a chilling thought, it is unlikely that their vote will surge enough for them to be forming the next government. Increased exposure may either moderate their line or expose it as sinister fascism (I hope the latter happens, but it is wholly in keeping with the idea of democracy as a mirror to allow the former idea to be entertained; we should not suppress them; it just gives them more anti-political ammunition). But then they would perhaps be forced to confront realities of politics and this would force a rethink on policy - as it did the Greens, who moderated and developed as a political movement rather than remained a wild fringe group - or, like with UKIP, Kilroy-Silk, and Veritas, insert some centripetal force into their hierarchy and rip them apart in a flurry of shredded union jacks and more importantly shredded fascist bilge. There must be a debate, though.

Love also exhorts the wayward MPs to listen now or be buried in their own cataclysm. Get back to talking about policy. Put some policy out. This nasty, sordid political boxing has gone on too long on both sides.

As someone once said, "Let sunshine reign." Please.

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*(the similarity between Cameron and Caramon might be coincidental, but I always read Caramon as Cameron and have on occasion called him David Caramon, so there might be similarities in the characters depicted. Time of the Twins, War of the Twins, Test of the Twins are all available from good bookshops, or failing that, your local Oxfam.)

The Tories have shot down to 39% after the recent expenses scandal, the Populous poll suggests in this morning's Times.

They still lead by 13% to Labour's 26% but Cameron's Brown-baiting obviously still isn't working to make sure his party profit from these hard times for Labour.

Something needs to be done - soon.

(Pulling a card for this from the Wisdom of Avalon oracle, The Eagle appears: "The Eagle...asks you to remember to soar high above life and look at the big picture. Don't get too caught up in the tiny, unimportant aspects of life. The spiritual world is the real one - your physical life is the dream." 

(In other words, there needs to be a concentration now on the bigger picture for everyone - stop the baiting and the squabbling and get on and work, Mr Cameron and Mr Brown, for the people who elect you - no more stupidity, no more expenses hand-wringing, and no more baiting. Just get on with the real things that matter, or you'll be overtaken by the BNP very quickly - and we would really prefer it if that didn't happen.) 

PART 2. THE CONSERVATIVES

Situation

The Hanged Man. You are at a life crossroads at which sacrifices and patience are needed if the right choices are to be made. Submit gracefully, and all will be well. Life needs to be viewed from a fresh angle, and what may seem a total distraction to your plans may just take you in a fresh, creative direction. You may feel you are wasting time hanging around, but it will prove to be well worth your while.

The Conservatives are non-plussed by this – brought up short by the fact that their own attack dog has turned on them, albeit not with as much force as on Labour (though that may change). They are surprised but perhaps prepared for this – it is ameliorated by the tip-off they received over the weekend – but nonetheless they did not expect this and see this as an unwelcome distraction keeping them from making electoral hay from the problems Labour are facing. It is perhaps for the rest of us disillusioned Conservatives who want some substance a change for the better – they are not given carte blanche just to walk into Downing Street and this may force their hand on policy. Regardless, they need to think about their next move, and this spread may open some doors on what they plan.

A very strong thought came to me over the weekend, where I was opening a door and a bomb went off, clearing my mind and clearing my vision of things going forward. Just as Cameron blew the lid off the conference in 2005 and changed the vision of the Conservatives’ future overnight, so this issue has rebounded on the Tories and could force them to “put up or shut up” as people have hoped they might at some point be forced to do. I hope so. Otherwise the consequences of this rethink might be more dramatic for those who have faced the future armed only with the sword of complacency and the shield of “not yet, wait a few more months, then we’ll have something for you”.

Appearance to the Public

King of Swords. In astrology the character of Saturn in his benign aspect closely resembles that of the King of Swords. He represents power, authority, and the law, splitting complex arguments with the edge of his sword. His judgements can at times seem lacking in tolerance of human frailty, but are never unfair. The card usually represents an authority figure that the querent can look to for justice.

The King is seen as a figure who is good with words – a lawyer – but has not got the substance or the legislative or executive power to follow through with them. Cameron is seen thus – he can still assert his authority on this to the public but this is still lacking in the potency to make the decisions that need to be taken to solve the problem. The impact is going to be significant only if the Tories do not hang together, and there is no suggestion that this alone will force Cameron’s hand. Nevertheless, they cannot go on like this for ever – the King of Swords needs to become the King of Pentacles if he is to do something about it. Brown and Cameron both have this problem – they are both talking when they should be doing.

Appearance to the Media

IX Wands. You enjoy well-earned success gained through honesty, hard work and intelligence. However, troubles are brewing on the horizon, and you are soon likely to be tested to the very limits of your patience and ability. Take the time now to cultivate key allies, and check too that your finances are robust enough to cope with unexpected demands.

Similarly to the card that came up here in Labour’s spread, the media is defending their honour by covering the Tories despite this card suggesting this may just be a fig-leaf, and the Guardian is saying that this article is pulling punches which should be equally ruinous to the parliamentary Conservative team. Fraser Nelson is weaselling out of condemning Tory misuse of flipping because he says it is not done for the same reasons, that is, to play the property market. What utter snide bollocks (excuse me). Flipping is flipping – if it’s wrong for one, it’s wrong for the other. This just exposes the media’s game; while it’s true that Vulpes Vulpes’ trust fund keeps him relatively safe from having to exploit expenses, there is no earthly reason why someone should flip like this for one reason and get away with it, and for another reason to be damned for it. Pure partisanship, and a poor defence of a  system which should be more even-handed than this for a proper democracy to function. And this is from someone who would be pro-Conservative given different leadership and direction.

Appearance within the Conservative Party

VII Swords. Hope appears after a long struggle, but keep your guard up. You face opposition to your plans and it would be wise to learn from its source, but you can achieve your aims if you persevere and be certain of your facts. Avoid direct confrontation, however; instead, let your ideas speak for themselves.

If the Tories had any ideas, then they would be speaking for themselves and the Tories would not have to manoeuvre in this underhand way – it is still in the position of overcoming obstacles, but by sly sleight-of-hand, not genuine honest hard work. There isn’t enough in this card to suggest the Tories can outrun their pursuers here for long; they need to come back with something solid and substantial to really consolidate these gains, and to make sure they and their cronies in the press can’t win the election by subterfuge as Labour did, in my opinion, last time.

Appearance to Cameron

Page of Wands. The Page of Wands is a messenger, usually of good fortune, heralding great events affecting your chosen career. He is energetic, loyal, idealistic, resourceful, and honest; the best kind of friend one could hope for. He can represent either the attitude you need in order to accomplish your aims – the part you must play toward someone of greater influence – or the person you should turn to for help to carry them out.

Cameron regards this as child’s play, a boy tilting at windmills, and does not take this seriously enough because he thinks he can use his tongue to escape once again from definite and thorough scrutiny. His Tweets enrage me – “Brown baiting over for the week”, for example – and make me think he is bullying his way to power in the nastiest possible way. We may have to endure 10 years of this cretin in charge of the country, who thinks the rules don’t apply to him or his friends – or he may find it is too late for these tactics once Labour get started on their manifesto. We shall see.

Roots of the issue

The Lovers. Generally this card represents love or friendship on the worldly plane, marking a kindling or re-kindling of affection after troubles have been overcome. A major commitment could seriously affect  the course of your life, and the climate is right for it to be a lasting and fruitful union. Complete honesty and trust are all that are needed to make the union work.

The tarot assesses the relationship between the Telegraph and the Tories as one of mutual dependency, and it has to be said that this upsets the balance of the issue and the ability to scrutinise the Tories properly and without prejudice of any kind, positive as it is in this case. This is too cosy a situation for investigative journalism to flourish, just as the Hutton report was eventually perceived as a whitewash for Blair, so this further undermines the possibility of a firm hand with both and all parties.

Seeds of the issue

The Emperor. The Emperor represents earthly power achieved through force of will, including war if necessary, though usually the card stands for stability, wealth, justice and the dominance of reason over emotion. It can represent an authority figure at work or in the family, or the attitude necessary to carry plans through to fruition. Sometimes it’s necessary to put aside reflection and sympathy and simply act.

The action in this card suggests to me that the Conservatives take some action to sort the situation out, but they are not renowned for using this active power for ends that would strengthen their base, only make them top heavy. Cameron’s attitude to politics suggests he believes himself too much to be the Emperor already, and does not understand the need for balance as well as naked power. This card may presage success, but it needs to be success wielded in a careful and understanding nature not in a blind, tyrannical, bullying fashion.

Action needed

Knight of Swords. The Knight of Swords is bold and enthusiastic, but also imaginative and clever like his Queen. He is a great champion of good causes and inspires others by his idealism and dedication to any cause he adopts. He is decisive and, while others dither over a course of action, he will just plunge headlong into it and generally win the day. He is a symbol of creative upheaval, usually leading to success.

Cameron and his party need to apply the same verve and vigour they apply to politics to policy, and then the party will be truly unassailable, even in the northern areas where the party’s vote has recently collapsed in favour of the BNP. The dynamism of this card is often perceived as recklessness; the party needs to be recklessly constructive to truly win my support and that of others who are still suspicious of the party’s motives. “Brown-baiting” won’t do; constructive policy might just tip my balance back into the Tories’ favour.

Action actually taken

Strength. This card signifies strength through meeting problems head-on and overcoming them by strength of will. Perseverance, courage and determination combined with intelligence and modesty make an irresistible combination not only for tackling adversity but for encouraging others to come to your assistance. The strength of this card inspires others because its triumph benefits all.

The Strength card – in controlling and containing challenges rather than rising to meet them – diverges from the Knight of Sword’s active creativity to a passive role. The Conservatives cannot however afford to just hold the media or the public at bay. They need to follow through with a lot of things that they have left hanging and stop baiting traps that they fall into too easily. People are cynical enough about politicians. Cameron just makes people more cynical, not less.

Solutions

IX Swords. Beware tempting, but false, invitations. Deception and even possible violence are warned by this card, but bear in mind that adversity is the best test of character, just as a sword requires fire and hammering to get a sharp edge. In the long run, know that all adversity can be turned to the good.

This is a less promising outcome than for Labour; solutions in this sense are what needs to happen and what possibly will happen to rectify the situation and bring things into their ordained pathway. The Tories have inflicted political damage on others –but those who live by the sword often die by the sword. The painful and cruel nature of Cameron’s tweets are symptomatic of the distorted and crippled political process, not part of their reshaping and remoulding. It is what was inflicted on us Tories at the last election, and should not be inflicted on others at this. But Cameron does not seem to heed this warning, and will pay through his own ordeal of fire during this forging process.

Direction

The Fool. A new beginning with fresh adventures ahead, although there is a very real danger of it all going horribly wrong. The bag on the Fool’s shoulder represents natural talents that he could employ usefully if he took the trouble to open the bag, but he generally doesn’t. For wild optimists this card is a warning to try to temper enthusiasms with a little common sense. For pessimists, it suggests lightening up a little.

The Tories cannot find stability to go with their new-found power, and they are running out of time to acquire some before Labour learn their lessons and come back with a vengeance. Cameron is dancing off into the sunset, spreading toxic tweets in his wake, while Gordon and Hazel and Harriet and Jack think more deeply and longingly about what they want to achieve and what they want to do. The people who win elections win them positively and happily. The “foxytories” as I call them condemned our last election campaign as “negative”. They should learn from this, then, rather than intensifying the blithely destructive poison they spew as they dance towards Downing Street, ignoring the chasm growing beneath their feet.

Short term outcome

King of Wands. The King of Wands is a charming leader who is energetic, honest, diplomatic and generous. His fatherliness can tend toward being too trusting. Being naturally loyal and conscientious, he is a great friend in times of trouble, being unafraid to take up arms in a good cause. In a spread he can represent either the attitude needed to address the situation, or the person you should turn to for help.

In this sense, the King is master of the present but not generator of the future. Blair was my original archetype of the King of Wands, mercurial, upbeat, merry and potent, but who lacked the foresight to maintain and work with his gifts and talents, and now reduced to a low-key post with a religious foundation rather than walking the world stage with the real giants of political power. The King of Wands lacks foresight, and although he has positive qualities as listed above, he is insubstantial and cannot hold and shape the real future with fundamental depth or clarity of purpose. He exists to win, but real Kings know that winning is only the beginning.

Long term outcome

The World. Upright, the World represents the favourable culmination of a long period of striving and hard work that meets at last with recognition and reward. It stands for completion, fulfilment and the dawn of a period during which you can relax and refresh yourself before the need for major exertion rises again. This is a good time to take stock and catch up on neglected areas of your life.

The World here represents a vague but positive future for the party, so the coming difficulties in the Nine, although necessary, represent a period in which the party grows up. Cameron cannot currently achieve what he wants to achieve merely by Brown-baiting. But he can show that the Conservatives can restore faith in government and faith in the political process; how this will be managed on current form remains a mystery, but the World does forecast some kind of definite promise in this situation – if only his Brown-baiting is kept to a minimum, he might avoid it being turned in on himself. It isn’t too late. Yet.

All the major parties are in the firing line over their expense accounts and their use and misuse. Although most of what is being done is legal and within the rules, the rules themselves seem to be more generous than some people believe necessary. Even Vulpes Vulpes’ sly admission that he apologises for his team misusing bad rules suggests that if senior Tories had been able to avoid the same scrutiny as fell upon Labour at the end of last week, then they might well have felt it was all right to keep using the same methods as Labour.

The Guardian discusses the insinuations that the Telegraph is soft-pedalling their scrutiny of senior Conservatives’ accounts and that they gave Cameron a longer warning than they did Brown. Cameron should either pledge to change the rules and say what he would do otherwise, or pay back the money, or stop weaselling out of it if he doesn’t want to fall into the same hole that Brown is in electorally. Loki did kill Heimdall – but died of his wounds during the battle. Cameron needs to think harder about his response if he wants to avoid the same fate.

Focussing back on the Prime Minister, where does this leave Labour (apart from lagging in the polls) and where will it take them within the short and long term? How effective will it actually be for the Conservatives to push their rather silly and immature line that although they dislike the rules, they still exploit them?

PART 1. LABOUR.

Situation

Queen of Wands. The Queen of Wands is a mature, practical person with a great down-to-earth wisdom. Charming, sympathetic, and graceful, she is less outgoing than her bold King but has very strong character and self-possession. She gets things done by talking to individuals rather than groups, and thus getting below the surface of events. Often she is the real leader of a group without being noticed.

What springs to mind instantly, independent of the card description, is “damage limitation”. The Queen cannot dictate or directly control events, so the emphasis here for Labour is channelling them into productive use and development of a response rather than mere denial or bluff. Publicly they are still trying to wrestle with the press and co-ordinate a response, and the card suggests they cannot, even as a government, do this pro-actively – they must bend to the will of the press. However the response can be grappled with and used to defuse and deflect the issue, and this shows that kind of development rather than any devastating annihilation of their agenda and authority.

Appearance to the Public

V Cups. Unhappiness and dissatisfaction cast a shadow over your relationships. Dwelling too much upon the past will only make the situation worse. What you need is a renewal of vision and it will come if you are patient, but in the mean-time, resist laying the blame for this situation on those around you. The problem lies within you.

The public is obviously disgruntled and disappointed in its representatives; it doesn’t take a tarot reader to prove that. However the Five of Cups contains within it some unspent force, some new direction and new promise that is hidden to the viewer: the public has not revolted over this, all parties are equally culpable, there is a possibility that real change can be effected through this widening of the issue from one or two wayward incidences (such as Derek Conway and the Wintertons last year) to the wider ministerial and backbench cadres being found to be wanting if not actually corrupt. The seeds of change to the system are seen by the public, and with the Five of Cups here they have to see it changing to be mollified.

Appearance to the Media

II Wands. A possible partnership offers a way of furthering your ambitions. Unnecessary self-doubt is blocking your way, however, so you need to be decisive and trust in your instincts. Or, if this is not possible, ally yourself to someone who has that confidence. The prospects are good – just have faith.

This is a political card and perhaps in this context a rather exploitative one to have in this instance. The media have opportunities to persecute and bestow their blessings or curses on one side or the other, and the fact that Labour have been hauled over the coals far more strictly than the Conservatives have is possibly a sign of naked partisanship rather than a legitimate effort to expose general corruption or develop a more genuine investigation into the issue. Just as essays and investigations on electoral fraud confine their questioning to narrow areas (partisan manipulation of postal votes) and ignore wider issues (the security of the system when postal votes have reached the local authorities responsible for their administration), so the media is preoccupied with attacking one side and letting the other off the hook with a few tendentious promises and obvious absurdities. Jolly bad show, chaps.

Appearance within Labour

The Hierophant. Providing comfort, security, the wisdom of the ages, and generosity in others’ time of need are among the many virtues of the Hierophant that make him someone to turn to in troubled times. But inflexibility – a lack of openness to change – can often negate these virtues. Too great a reverence for the past can become hostility toward all change, and then the Hierophant symbolises an obstacle to growth. He can also indicate marriage or other lasting union.

Labour are balancing themselves with some inner knowledge that they are still based on something more solid than it appears in the press. They are shown as guarding their territory jealously; it might well be that they have closed ranks somewhat since the activity of the last week and are trying to staunch the wounds. They feel that this is the best response; there is no warmth between them, no sense they can relax, but there is no chaos, no open warfare, and no destructive influences. They are licking their wounds and building their future behind closed doors and giving nothing away.

Appearance to Brown

King of Swords. In astrology the character of Saturn in his benign aspect closely resembles that of the King of Swords. He represents power, authority, and the law, splitting complex arguments with the edge of his sword. His judgements can at times seem lacking in tolerance of human frailty, but are never unfair. The card usually represents an authority figure that the querent can look to for justice.

In other words, Brown is reduced somewhat from his usual role – the pro-active King of Pentacles – to someone who can only arbitrate and give judgement rather than do much to sort the problem out. This is consistent with his problems at getting his original plans for expenses through, and his need for an independent commissioner might help to ease the situation. (I was disappointed with the media – like Cameron’s U-turn on the post office, when it was first announced, it was met with welcome by the opposition parties on Newsnight – it was only when the media came out against the issue that people got upset with it.) So Brown can only referee in this situation, but he will be able to do so in a direct and forceful manner to restore his own fragile self-confidence.

Roots of the issue

III Swords. Argument and strife threaten your plans. Be patient. Separation, frustration, and disillusionment all threaten, but if you hold onto your long-term goals they can still be realised – you just have to work out who your real friends are. Break-ups are always painful, but totally necessary in the long run.

When I draw this card, I know I will be sick, and I know it will be difficult to avoid it, but I know I have to go through it, and I know it won’t be serious or damaging in the long-term. Here the situation is obviously hurtful – a trial by ordeal – but it is a learning experience for all concerned, and not a lasting wound; something that will actually in the long run let out bad blood and help the body politic renew and heal itself properly.

Seeds of the issue

Ace of Cups. The Ace of Cups represents the beginning of a period of joy, abundance, friendship, fertility, love, and just about every other good thing you can think of on the emotional plane. It stands for the promise of being able to act out your dreams in a period of happy creativity while enjoying yourself along the way and being appreciated by those around you. Nonetheless, it will call upon all your finest qualities.

Things can only get better. The only way is up. There is a chance for a solution, if there is no interference from outside, and interference in this way would only strengthen the resolve to solve the problem rather than let it fester. The media won’t let up with their destructive tendency towards Labour but this challenge is one which Labour can rise to and present a united and coherent front – because they know they have stiff competition from others.

Action needed

Knight of Wands. The Knight of Wands is a versatile warrior, armed and fearlessly ready for action. The card signifies departures, change, and adventures into the unknown. It’s a warning to keep your eyes and ears open, because you are surrounded by challenge. But if, like the Knight (or with his help), you face it with courage, flexibility and imagination, there’s every reason that you should triumph in the end.

Labour need to be responsive to this, to take charge of the situation, to reform, renew and re-establish. The Knight suggests they are no longer fully in control, but there is no doubt that they still have the capacity to change the situation simply by opening themselves up to action and going on a policy offensive, changing the system, changing their own habits, and being flexible enough to bend to the will of the public and carry out the necessary works to put this situation back under their control.

Action actually taken

Ace of Wands. The Ace of Wands represents the beginning of some great new practical venture or career. The time is right for putting your boldest ideas into action, pushing back the boundaries of possibility, and sharing your enthusiasm with the world. Now, when everything is flowing your way, is the time to exercise your talents, stake out your territory and show the world what you can do.

Labour are able to make a start, to make a killing blow on this, and plug the gap in the dyke. In the card image for this pack, a raging volcano is spewing forth lava and flame; although this often means that the querent has initiated something volatile and direct, this to me now with Owlperson’s guidance suggests that the draconic soldier in the card is wielding his rod to stop up the mountain and cease the lava flow. This is Labour at their responsive best; whether the rod holds is a matter for Fate, but at least they do take the necessary action to stop the brewing eruption successfully, probably through moving to fully stop the abuses before they get a distinctly illegal flavour.

Solutions

The Hanged Man. You are at a life crossroads at which sacrifices and patience are needed if the right choices are to be made. Submit gracefully, and all will be well. Life needs to be viewed from a fresh angle, and what may seem a total distraction to your plans may just take you in a fresh, creative direction. You may feel you are wasting time hanging around, but it will prove to be well worth your while.

Labour need to consider their next move carefully, as they have one chance above to stop this volcano before it completely destroys them. They are helped by an opposition who couldn’t lace its shoes up without consulting the tabloids first. They are helped by still having a working majority and they are helped by the opposition having to make up a deficit of 150 seats before they have an overall majority – this isn’t like the mid-1990s where one brush from a feather would have toppled Major’s government overnight. Labour have the time and patience to get out of this mess, but they have to know where and when to direct the forces inherent in both Aces above, and the solution is to consider their actions carefully rather than charge into battle indiscriminately and risk the opposition coming fully to their senses in the mean time.

Direction

IV Wands. It is now time for a well-deserved rest and the enjoyment of good company. Your plans were well-laid, so you can allow yourself to bask for a while as you see your ideas take shape in reality. This could also be a good time to consider moving house, or formalising a romantic attachment. Enjoy this time, but don’t allow complacency to creep in.

Order and structure returns to the situation, and Labour begin to rebuild a certain confidence in themselves. They can’t make firm plans yet, but they can go on adding to their internal structure to  solidify and strengthen their tentative unity in the face of an onslaught from their opponents who are now also caught in their own traps. It is not so much time to bask or relax as time to construct and build and turn the attention to something else through growing confidence in their own unity in culpability.

Short term outcome

Nine of Pentacles. You are likely to receive substantial reward for your accomplishments, and you will be able to afford to relax and enjoy your more contemplative inclinations. Don’t shut out your family and friends, however, because they have had to put up with your darker moods and have probably helped you through them much more than you know.

The party knows and understands its situation and is rewarded by a period in which they are able to rely more on its policy standing than on petty, short term politics. Perhaps it is because of problems with the opposition, or better than expected election results, or perhaps Brown begins to claw back a poll rating not redolent of an open sewer. It is also what Labour can rely on in policy substance – they are blessed with an opposition who are interested only in winning on one day rather than building afterwards, and believe they can capitalise on government unpopularity – as well as underlying figures which suggest Labour can still pull their vote back into the polling booths. Labour strategists have been so publicly pessimistic lately that they must know something we don’t.

Long term outcome

III Pentacles. A very promising outlook for new ventures is forecast, which calls for the exercise of all your best talents. Creativity flourishes in this situation, so bring out the artist or craftsman in you and do your best. You have a chance to prove your mastery to the world and reap the rewards. Integrity is everything.

Labour can reconstruct some sort of advantage and policy substance, and use it to their advantage, if they repair their shattered reputation here – but this is an optimistic note to end on, suggesting the need to keep building and keep designing and innovating to remain in the public’s political favour even if they are no longer able to wipe the floor with their opponents and sweep the board electorally. The day is fast approaching when policy becomes more important than politics, and Labour are best placed to win that battle even if they are losing this one.

Woot! 10 Downing Street and HM Treasury are following me on Twitter. No surprise - they follow everyone who follows them. I see Jacqui Smith and her cronies are still doing their job properly fulfilling their promises to monitor Twitter, at least.

Today's card is from the Susie Green "Animal Messages - Seek Inspiration From Your Animal Guides" cards. Animal cards can be quite dull to read from as they require you to do a bit of thinking about what the animal means to you in each position, but they are handy at least for giving advice rather than telling fortunes, and of course with oracle cards advice usually becomes fortune if it is not followed.

Lion.

Banish loneliness by reaching out to special friends.

Tawny monarch of the Savannah, LION does not waste her days in needless physical exertion but conserves energy by sleeping, resting and companionably lounging. Working long, exhausting hours for the money to purchase prestige goods leaves little time for the pleasures of friendship. Loneliness is spirit-diminishing - designer clothes make poor companions. Lion has padded in to your cards to remind you how vital friends and neighbours really are. Reach out to those around you and be open to others.

Confrontation is averted as those with the power and authority to do so are forced to seek compromise in order to stabilise themselves and balance their needs with the needs of the greater good. Lion counsels not that greatness is achieved through the exertion of power and authority, but that it is achieved by being holistic, solid and grounded about the issue, and arbitrating the situation before it gets out of control. Compromise is necessary here to avoid what was foretold in the Two of Swords yesterday, so this is a definite attempt to seek it as well as advice that it is more necessary than ever.

A new slot to try and develop something more pithy than a full reading.

Today...10 May

Two of Swords

Friendship, including possible reconciliation with an old enemy, shows the way forward. Often the most fruitful partnerships are those based upon underlying conflict because that way all the angles are covered, whereas like-minded people can simply reinforce each other's prejudices and only later discover their limitations in the wider world.

In other words, the confrontational situation here is tending to a point - with things becoming more dangerous for the Prime Minister and his party, not less. This confrontation however is not yet fully developed, and could still be diffused - it is not inherent in this card that it actually needs to come to a head if it is headed off. The situation is balanced by two equal and opposite forces, not rapidly declining into conflagration.

I wrote this article as a non-technical explanation of my research spurred on by the 45 Percenters issue and a subsequent exploration into whether I could see any anomalies at the wider level than just Reading East. Unfortunately I don't know how to upload a graph or Excel file to the web - if anyone can help, please email me on louise.stanley@live.co.uk.

Election results show alarming trend

Louise Stanley, (published to web 10 May 2009)

Council of Europe document here: http://assembly.coe.int/main.asp?Link=/documents/workingdocs/doc06/edoc10993.htm

Research compiled over the last few years indicates that electoral results since 1992 have been distorted in favour of “round” results. In response to concerns arising from a European Council report of June 2006, it has been demonstrated that British general election results have been manipulated over a period of 17 years. The report, dated June 2006 which provided a list of issues that needed attention within the voting system as a whole. This report included postal voting problems, but was not limited to manipulation of the postal voting system by party representatives – it also dealt with abuses and mishandling by the civil administration itself after uncounted votes were discovered in Birmingham in 2004 in the run-up to the local and European elections on June 10 that year.

Figures compiled by a Berkshire researcher, currently an independent political observer, and, over the last twelve years a member of both major political parties, showed consistent year-on-year trend towards more constituencies returning results which end in a 5 or a 0. Data was taken from the site http://www.electiondemon.co.uk which provides raw election results for all elections and by-elections since 1983.

In the period in which Labour has been winning or expecting to win general elections, the results have shown a “notable trend” towards candidates of all parties, including fringe nominees, attaining “round number results”, and the number of constituencies in which these results occur has risen from election to election. Observations of local results within the Reading area – in both Reading East and Reading West constituencies – led to a survey of raw election data in an attempt to find out whether patterns noted during the 2005 election could have been repeated on a national scale. The survey did not distinguish between postal ballots and hand-cast votes, and instead focussed on trends within the published election results themselves. The current postal voting system did not exist in its current form prior to the 2001 general election (although all-postal pilots were conducted at the 2000 local elections, these results are not under scrutiny here), and cannot be considered as a major factor in any fraud allegations in previous elections.

The percentage of “clean” constituencies – constituencies where there were no results ending in a 5 or a 0 – fell from a high of 44.95% in 1987 to 22.96% in 2005, over Great Britain and Northern Ireland as a whole. Regional results for England in 2005 were concentrated in the region of 22.9%, whereas in previous years more variable results were obtained, even as part of the downward trend.

The researcher is satisfied that these results are not symptomatic of any social or economic conditions prevailing over the 25 years in question, and the only notable cause of the distortion is, arguably, a qualitative rise in media and apparent public support (through opinion poll surveys) for the Labour Party between 1992 and 2005. The number of results ending in 5 or 0 is similar from election to election in terms of a percentage of all results over the 25-year period in question, but in terms of the distribution of these results across the constituencies and regions, there is a marked fall in the number of constituencies where such results were not returned. Furthermore, the number of candidates peaked in 1997 and has fallen since, ruling out any correlation between rise in candidate numbers and an increase in frequency of round number results. Since the number of people voting is variable, then each candidate’s result is also as equally likely as another to end in a 5 or 0 and therefore each result even within a constituency can be treated as a discrete event.

A stark example is shown by the 2001 result returned for Witney, where the Liberal Democrat candidate obtained an exact 10,000 votes. This result is within expected statistical probabilities, as provided by the researcher’s first table showing the frequency of round number results in terms of single candidates rather than their distribution across constituencies (the subject of the second table) but highlights the degree to which manipulation might be being hidden by the civil administration between polling station and count.

The Council of Europe report of June 2006 provided circumstantial evidence of tampering and manipulation of results during the 2005 election. It revealed “25 allegations of electoral fraud in 19 parliamentary constituencies” of vote-rigging within local authorities’ electoral services in addition to partisan manipulation of the postal vote system which has over the past 9 years been examined by the press in great detail. Both Labour and Conservative parties have been accused of fraudulent manipulation of postal voting in the past but official statistics betray a worrying trend even allowing for the activities of known fraudsters. The nature of the variable studied suggests, moreover, that actual engineering of the results took place rather than mere attempts to over-represent the partisan vote, suggesting that civil authorities throughout the United Kingdom were actively tampering with the results prior to the count. Statistics for general elections were compiled without reference to locality or presiding authority; the analysis focussed on establishing a national trend rather than confining scrutiny to one particular local authority or regional establishment.

The research, summarised in the Reading Evening Post in late November (article not available online), was submitted to the Electoral Commission, who are currently investigating the trends.

The research raises significant questions over the legitimacy of the current government and of governments since 1992, as well as for the security of the coming general election. It is alleged that this manipulation has benefitted Labour rather than the Conservatives, since the period in which the manipulation has taken place has been exactly parallel with the period in which the Labour Party has been predominant in published opinion polling and official surveys, though no specific allegation is levelled at the Labour Party itself. However, significant change in the dominant party in the media could also mean that the civil administration manipulates results in favour of published “public opinion” where no such desire for a change of government exists on the ground; the country is in danger of being run from Fleet Street rather than Westminster.

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Rotten Boroughs - An Occasional Series on Electoral Fraud

The recent difficulties Labour are having in Erith and Thamesmead contain the seeds of what is wrong with the electoral system in this country. Belated Blair’s Babe Georgia Gould is allegedly being rigged in, in what is to my mind the last gasp of Blairism rearing its ugly head in this country. (I can’t believe Brown actually wants more Babes in the wood-panelled tea-rooms.) Furthermore, the allegations are inextricably linked with the wider way in which we vote in this country, and with the dreaded system of postal voting.

I campaigned very hard at the general election of 2005 for the Conservatives, and we in Reading had our own mini-crime wave of fraudulent postal voting. The outgoing Labour MP, deselected Jane Griffiths, refused to acknowledge the Labour councillors accused of manipulation of the postal voting system, and denounced her own party in her Commons’ swan-song. At one point she was rumoured to have crossed the floor to the Tories, round about the same time I made that decision, though this proved to be false. Griffiths will be sadly missed as an independent voice in the Commons.

Prior to 2001, the only people who could vote by post were those who could demonstrate that they would be absent from their place of residence on polling day itself. Subsequent to New Labour’s attempt to increase turnout, people have been permitted to apply for a postal vote without having to prove that they will be AWOL on that particular Thursday. In some areas – before it was mercifully sat upon by the Electoral Commission – all-postal voting was trialled at local elections, most notably in the contest for the mayoralty of Hartlepool.

By the 2005 general election this way of voting was quite a significant factor. During my four months campaigning in Reading, Wokingham and Newbury, each party sent out forms for people to fill in and return to the council to make sure they got their vote in early. In our case, leaflets were sent out to every firm Conservative supporter urging them to apply for a postal vote, and although Michael Howard said that if he was elected Prime Minister he would reform the system back to what it was before the 2001 deluge, he had no particular objection to the party using – but not abusing – the system to “farm” votes in this way.

There are some flaws to this system which have not been analysed properly by the media. Basically what happens is that activists distribute forms to the public but these forms are not returned to the party offices, they are sent direct to the council, thereby not involving the activists any further, there is still the issue of what happens to the votes themselves once they are sent in to the council overseeing the election. In our case, this was Reading Borough Council. Representatives of all candidates are invited to the opening of the postal votes, which takes place after the deadline for the votes to come in – which in our case was almost a week before May 5’s actual poll. This process is like shelling nuts; the votes are contained within an envelope which also has certification and witnessing documents to make sure it really is one person, one vote. These are removed, validated and filed away somewhere.

The votes are, however, visible to those attending this event, allowing activists to take a reading as to what the projected result could be. Our activist recorded that, roughly speaking, 45% of postal votes were going to the Conservatives, 30% to Labour and 20% to the Liberal Democrats. This is a highly marginal seat we are talking about. Reading East is like a cross-section of the entire country – it may be a prosperous south-eastern English town, but Whitley Wood, south of the main town centre, sandwiched between House of Fraser and Junction 11 of the M4, is one of the most deprived areas of the country. As a recent and rather guilty convert to Conservatism, which at one point cost me a long-standing relationship which was on the verge of a marriage proposal, I was surprised and delighted to find us delivering rather a lot of Vote Conservative flyers – the ones sent to pledged voters a day or two before the election to remind them to turn out – to the sort of estates you find featured on Shameless. This is also a seat where in previous elections the proportion of Conservative, Labour and Liberal votes was roughly in line with national figures. So it is not a seat likely to have shown a high proportion of Conservative votes without a corresponding national swing to the Blues.

What I am really trying to say is Michael Howard, he of the owlish glasses and curiously accented voice, should be Prime Minister.

Yes, you read that right. Michael Howard, up until so close to the election, was actually polling the margins his successor now enjoys in the polls, even if only on paper. At the proportions specified, Wilson’s majority should be of the order of 6,000, on a turnout equal to that officially recorded.

So what happened within the last four or five days of the election campaign for Labour to whittle a huge 15% deficit down to a single 1% gap between Labour’s candidate Reading Buses chairman Tony Page, who had a conviction for behaving embarrassingly in a public lavatory, and former mobile phone businessman and current Conservative MP Rob Wilson? Labour would have needed to pull out all the stops to save themselves from a massive defeat, both locally and nationally, and Howard would have needed to have been found with a Sent Items cache of emails documenting Tony Blair’s embarrassing diseases, to pull back that kind of a margin. Even if we are talking less rounded figures, the difference between 15% and 1% is not possible to make up in a single week when the man in the next constituency, Martin Salter, is so afraid of losing his own seat he is pulling valuable Labour activists back into Reading West.

These issues cannot be ignored, because they are not the province of party activists, the discrepancy lies between opening the votes and counting them – and is thus the responsibility of the local authorities who are charged with dispensing electoral security. If activists know who has voted how and in what proportions, then so do those charged with looking after these votes between opening and count.

In 2004, a Birmingham official was sacked from their electoral services department when 1,000 uncounted postal votes were discovered on his watch. Now, it might be charitable here to suggest that these uncounted votes were directly in proportion to how the eventual result turned out – even before the rest were counted. However, that is probably not the case. More likely, our man in Reading had seen exactly the same statistics as our activist had, and decided that perhaps that margin of 15% to the Conservatives would just not do, and had tidied a certain number of those Conservative postal votes into a pile and perhaps just forgot to put them into the pool on election night for counting. Poor people – they don’t know the Conservatives aren’t supposed to win nationally, though perhaps the donkey with the convictions for cottaging might not be a good candidate to join Labour in the House, so let’s ensure that the Tory gets in with a small majority – not more than, say, 475 – and so the rest of those votes get “mislaid”. By the time they turn up, no-one’s interested, the old guy with the irritating voice has been replaced by a younger, brighter and tamer successor, and it’s OK again to let the Conservatives have a day or three in the sun, maybe even let them win next time so Labour don’t get too uppity. No-one, in short, cares two hoots what happened four years ago.

But the thought that we might have and continue to have the wrong government because of that is far too depressing to contemplate.

Seems that Martin Kettle may agree with the analysis of Labour I wrote yesterday.

I do like being vindicated.