Beam Me Up, Scotty

In my mind's eye it must have been like one of those golden evocations of childhood from European cinema ... possibly German, probably French. A little girl, slightly anxious, slightly hurrying, runs from hiding location to hiding location, but every closet door she opens reveals an older child who shoos her away. As the ominous sound of another child counting towards a hundred gets louder in the background, there seems not a table or bed that does not already conceal a hider.

In this case, the little girl in the story is Patricia Scotland, the soon-to-be-erstwhile Attorney General, and amongst the various bigger children one might find: Gordon Brown (still under the desk and now in desperate need of a bath and shave); Yvette Cooper-Balls (still crying after the B.B.C. interviewer dipped her pigtails in ink); "Whatever Happened To" Jacqui Smith; and Alistair Darling, who now wears the permanently-dazed expression of someone who has survived being struck by lightning. The only one not evidently in hiding is Baron M., and whether this is because his hiding place is too well chosen or because he himself is "coming to get you" is yet to be established.

Poor Baroness Scotland of Asthal! Labour actually has only one big political idea, and it is basically this: get the costs of government paid for twice by the taxpayer by passing back to ordinary citizens the cost of regulation. In this case, employers have been given increased responsibility for ensuring that the people who work for them are not illegal immigrants. Patricia knows all about immigration, not because she was born in Dominica herself but because she was a Q.C. (the first black woman to become one, incidentally) and - oh yes! - she was a Home Office minister who was involved in framing the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality 2006 which tightened those responsibilities on employers.

So, if there was one member of the government you could guarantee would not be caught employing an illegal immigrant, it is Baroness Scotland of Asthal.

(I think when that petard detonated it scared a whole bunch of pigeons that had come home to roost.)

Accordingly - and in a neat piece of role-reversal that will appeal to connoisseurs of irony - the Red-faced Baroness's apology to the nation had to be delivered by Mrs. Brown's little boy, who has become the nation's favourite deliverer of vicarious contrition ever since he apologised for the maltreatment of Alan Turing last week. Surely only the public revelation that his pants were on fire can have dragged the Prime Minister from his customary refuge.

Just when you thought that no member of the government less credible could be found to rush to Scotland's defence, however, Labour demonstrated that in this one critical area they can exceed all reasonable expectations.

The person who was sent onto Newsnight to speak on the behalf of Baroness Scotland of Asthal (Asthal, one notes, being the Oxford village where she now resides, rather than the area of Walthamstow where she grew up) was none other than Keith Vaz.

Keith Vaz, Ladies and Gentlemen!

(Or, if you need to Google him in a hurry, Vaz Scandal.)

Now Sordel is aware that it may be claimed that Baroness Scotland, Keith Vaz and Trevor Phillips attract controversy not because allegations against them are true but because they themselves are not white. Sordel gives due credit to this possibility.

However ... the day that I need Keith Vaz to stand in front of gunfire to protect me, I hope that I will have the courage to talk him out of it.