Well, Alastair’s second post for his World Cup blog is up and he’s already forgotten about talking about football. There was precious little talk of it in his first post - maybe he’s realised he’s just not cut out for football punditry.

Good to see the 45 minute jokes touched a nerve. Actually, my joke (if you want to call it that) wasn’t an old one - it was freshly minted especially for him. (To be honest though, Alastair’s barrel is going to be nothing but splinters and sushi by the end of the tournament.)

It was also very nice to see the “forces of conservatism” dusted down. We haven’t heard from them since the mid 1990s, have we? I suppose he’s right when he says they were present in large numbers on his blog yesterday. Those who would have liked to have seen a more conservative civilian death toll in Iraq, for instance. I would have liked to have seen a more conservative use of lies and manipulation over the last nine years in favour of moral courage and conviction. But that’s just me.

This is my last word on the subject. It looks like this World Cup is going to be a cracker and I for one am not going to let Campbell pollute my enjoyment of it any further. Time to leave him alone.

It’d be heartening to think that everybody else capable of analytical thought will do the same. Campbell’s blog would then become like the ice floe in that penguin movie. Labour supporters can congregate, driven by instinct and fear and all quack together. Those who can’t get close enough to the centre of the huddle will die off of course. Frozen out, so to speak. But to lament them would be to forget that “we have always accepted that there will be some very regrettable civilian casualties“.

It’d be interesting to see how quickly blogging loses its lustre for Alastair if the comment section of his World Cup honkings was to become a ghetto exclusively populated by those who need to be told how to think and those desperate to worship at the altar of his bitter, insecure and self-inflated masculinity.

“Ooh, Maradona, you say? Oooh, London Marathon, you say? Ooooh, triathalon? My, how hard you work at maintaining your fading virility. Still, it’s nice to know you’ve found something to fill your remaining years now your best ones are behind you.”

“Blogging the World Cup, you say? Didn’t you used to consort with presidents?”