What, where, when, why and how?

Mr Brown told Labour MPs: “I understand how difficult it is when food prices and fuel prices are rising.”

“It is difficult out there and I understand that. People want to know we get it and understand their anxieties.”

He understands, understands, understands. How does he understand? Does he pass amongst his people in disguise to eavesdrop on their petty concerns like a king in a fairy tale? Has a courtier appeared before him crying, ‘Sire, the people beg you feel their pain?’ How is he going to let people know he ‘gets it’? Currently we’re hearing it third hand, filtered via an MP-to-journalists game of Chinese Whispers.

And the forelock-tugging Denis Macshane might have thought he was doing his master a favour when he said…

…that Mr Brown’s approach had been “more humane, more human and much more sympathetic”…

…but he makes the Prime Minister sound like the Tin Man learning to cry in the Wizard of Oz or himself sound like a roboticist who’s made a breakthrough in getting his mechanical creations to mimic human emotion. The thought that Brown has been clanking around Whitehall in the last few weeks squawking ‘WHY. DO. YOU. CRY. HU-MAN?’ is a compelling one.

Has the Prime Minister been practising his humanity and sympathy? Has he had coaching? Or has he possessed them all along but has only now found a use for them? The thought that the Prime Minister has begun expressing these sensibilities only after being badgered into it isn’t very comforting. There’s a Blairite artificiality and expediency about it.

Still, panic over. Vague assurances and nebulous emollients win the day and Labour MPs’ hearts yet again. Go back to bed, Britain.