Virtue, Vice and Brown's Almost Imperceptible Arches

'Virtue is more to be feared than Vice,' wrote Adam Smith (born on this day in 1723), 'because its excesses are not subject to the regulations of Conscience.' This certainly appears to be the case with Gordon Brown's Virtue - his famous 'moral compass' - which is clearly unregulated by anything most of us would recognise as Conscience. The most startling (though really, I suppose, it shouldn't have been) thing I heard in the wake of last night's supposedly seismic events was Barry Sheerman telling how he was woken at 1am to be told by his constituency party that they had had phone calls from Number Ten and Yvette Cooper demanding that they haul Sheerman in and discipline him. This for floating the idea of a secret ballot of Labour members... Anyway, regardless of the words of the Great Prognosticator, I still cling to my rash prediction that Brown won't be going in June. We must never underestimate the tenacious hold of those Carp-like feet with their 'exceptional length and breadth and almost imperceptible arches'...