Where was I? So Heather Mills McCartney posed for some saucy naked pics some 20 years ago. So? So? So? According to The Sun the photo-shoot amounts to hardcore porn and show Mills McCartney wearing handcuffs, slathering baby oil on to a male porn star, and posed with said model in positions so depraved and disgusting that they would make ordinary Sun readers (who enjoy decent, blameless lifestyles ogling page 3 stunnas) sick at the thought of them. This country is so sexually retarded that I am considering moving to a cave in Dorset with an Italian porn star hung like a shire horse, where we will create our own hybrid super-race of Jane-Austen-loving studs and nymphets. And yet, I feel it somehow, not only that Mr Blair will shortly be off into the setting sun, but that Mr Brown will be off as well It is just a feeling that I have

More from Alan Watkins.

After all, we – or, rather, the Labour benches – have become accustomed to governing with large majorities Mr Blair or Mr Brown will still be comfortably off. In 1955, the Churchill Government would have run its course: the decision was taken by the apparatchiks at Central Office to go while the going was good. There was nothing wrong with the reasoning except that Eden went off his head later on, though the position was remedied by Macmillan.It would be imprudent in the extreme if Mr Brown took any risks with his majority. Instead of playing fag-end of Mr Blair’s audience he would have what his supporters wanted, a fresh mandate. Eden went to the country within seven weeks of Churchill’s retirement in 1955 but was in office only until January 1957.There would be a temptation for Mr Brown to do likewise. James Callaghan had just over three years in Downing Street, while Anthony Eden had a year and nine months, and Alec Douglas-Home a year only. Even Dr John Reid will be persuaded to join the cheering throng before very long.The truth is that Mr Brown is beginning to look like an unlucky Prime Minister It is a matter almost wholly of longevity.

The Union Flag was supplanted in the 1990s by the red cross on a white ground, so emphasising the qualities of English nationalism, the British National Party and general disobligingness Mr Brown is paying tribute to England too. Mr Blair has been doing something similar on government buildings, though he lacks quite the personal touch.The St George’s Cross used to be flown on obscure English parish churches, but Wilson’s (not to mention Sir Alf Ramsey’s) brave lads used to be supported solidly by the Union Jack. For my part, I cling to the truth that, once a PR man, always a PR man.I see that Mr Cameron has taken to flying the St George’s flag from his bicycle for the duration of the World Cup or, at any rate, for its preliminary stages. He has also proposed that the deputy leader should go down the aisle afterwards with Mr Brown, with Mr Straw as the blushing bride; or better, perhaps, as the pretty bridesmaid.How can one put this? But are they, possibly, too old for this kind of performance? Instead, Mr David Cameron has been handed the bridal bouquet. But since ancient times there has been an apostolic succession of deputy leaders, in the post-war period all elected, and of greater or lesser degrees of ineffectiveness.Mr Straw has never lost his gift for stating the obvious That is one of his great political strengths Mr Straw has advanced the year by 12 months That is the only substantial modification. There has been a whole string of arbitrarily appointed Tory deputy PMs. The explanation seems to lie in what Samuel Johnson once described as “ignorance, madam, pure ignorance”.There have been only two Labour Deputy PMs, Herbert Morrison and John Prescott, with C R Attlee as Winston Churchill’s deputy in the Coalition government.