Howard profits from the rise of the Notting Hill Tories

Parliament was never designed for glorious weeks of high summer like this one. Its book-lined corridors; its snug bars; its beery, false jocularity; the stench of thwarted ambition; those great thick walls; the badly kept secrets; the formal dress code; those fat, florid, middle-aged men: all this makes Westminster a winter place.

Summer weeks like this are about beauty, flirtation, gaiety and sport. Sensible MPs, like Nicholas Soames, Robin Cook and David Cameron (this week singled out by Michael Howard as a man with a great role to play in the future of the Tory party) contemplated escape to Royal Ascot. But the others lingered, made do with drinking cheap Pimm’s on the Commons terrace, and took stock.

Liberal Democrats were sour. They needed a big breakthrough in the elections and it did not come. Charles Kennedy may well come under fresh pressure as the summer progresses. But that was to be expected.