Sorry, But Has There Been a Coup: and other great unanswered questions of the Cameron era. Steve Lowe

something, but all they really want to do is fuck in the woods at night.

       Is Cameron just Clarkson’s patsy?

      Certainly, the car-loving rock fan and smoker seems to be present at 90% of the key gatherings of Britain’s elite: why is no-one drawing the obvious conclusion?

      At Christmas 2010, as the BSkyB debate raged (can we get away with letting Murdoch have all of BSkyB? Should we wait a bit longer so it doesn’t look too obvious?), Clarkson dined with David Cameron, Rebekah Brooks and James Murdoch (at Brooks’ house).

      Clarkson has revealed that they did not discuss the BSkyB deal, but instead talked about taking ‘sausage rolls’ on a ‘picnic’. This is his little joke: ‘sausage rolls’ is code for BSkyB, and ‘picnic’ is code for shooting the Director-General of the BBC in the back of the head. Clarkson’s Chipping Norton pile is the epicentre (but is not in the centre) of the Cotswolds. Brooks met her husband at Clarkson’s house – Charlie Brooks, the ‘racehorse trainer and novelist’ (which sounds like a euphemism for being either a gangster or unemployed). Yes: Clarkson set the media player up with ‘an old pal’.

      Moreover, at an earlier New Year’s Eve party, David Cameron himself looked on as Clarkson brandished a Kalashnikov. And that’s true, because an eye-witness said so. And that eye-witness was Dom Joly, and Dom Joly does not lie. So it’s true: Clarkson has a stock of the world’s leading assault rifles (a stock of at least one).

      Even in public, Cameron genuflects before Clarkson. The PM dressed up as The Stig for Clarkson’s 50^th birthday party. He really did do that. He made a little film for him. Clarkson likes films.

      Clarkson often humiliates Cameron. He makes Sam Cam smoke. Sam, according to Clarkson, ‘is one of those non-smokers [who’d like to] smoke all my bloody cigarettes.’ At the fateful ‘sausage roll’ Christmas meal, a row between Clarkson and Murdoch about the environment (no, really) only ended when ‘Samantha Cameron suddenly remembered that she’d like 400 of my cigarettes.’

      What is Clarkson saying here? He’s saying: ‘Look, Cameron, your wife is padding around after me again, begging for cigarettes. She’s putting my fags in her mouth again, Cameron – how does that make you feel?’

      Clarkson has drawn many into the orbit of his Cotswolds seat of power. At one legendary party for the great and the not very good, and Clarkson, as well as the motoring motormouth himself, movers and shakers moved and shook all over the place. Mandy frugged ‘vigorously’ on the dancefloor. Michael Gove was there, as was Patrick Kielty. Steve Hilton was there, and James Purnell (remember him?).

      For there is a nexus of power in this land running from Clarkson to Mandy to Kielty.

      Bet you didn’t know Kielty was involved. Yeah, well, he’s bringing down the BBC from within. There had to be some reason for those shows.

       Think about it.

       Will they come back for the trees?

      The Tory Party had been out of office for 13 years. It had been slavering to get back in, to get the country back on course after all the New Labour insanity. It knew what it needed to do. It needed to privatise the forests. It needed to get those trees. Fast!

      The trees just hadn’t been working hard enough. Yeah, they’d grown. Yeah, some of them had been chopped down. But it had all been quite a slow process.

      There are powerful forces that want those trees and have been working hard behind the scenes, for the trees. ‘Let us not delay,’ said the Tories. ‘Get the trees! Get the trees!’

      But the trees were well-defended. The trees had hidden strength. People liked the trees. So then, almost as soon as they had set out towards the trees, the Tories ran away from the trees. Back! Back! Run away! Run away from the trees! Run away!

      Many referred to this hasty retreat from the trees as a U-turn – as evidence that the government did not know what the fuck it was doing in any respect. George Osborne was quick to put them right: ‘I don’t think it was a sign of weakness. I think it was a sign of strength.’

      Yes: running towards trees and then running away from trees. It is the very definition of weird… I mean strong.

      So, then they hit upon the cunning idea of privatising the entire countryside – which includes the trees.

      Ripping up the planning legislation was a bold move, alienating the Telegraph and the National Trust. But trees is trees is progress.

      Its opponents have pored over the National Planning Policy Framework, strangely missing a tiny footnote buried towards the back, denoted with a † † †: ‘The default answer to development proposals is yes – particularly if the land includes trees.

      ‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! You will never foil us! Never!’

       Should child cage-fighting be regulated?

      When this question was posed on the BBC News homepage, I initially thought, Well, yes. But then I thought, Hang on, that’s what the BBC wants us to think. I’m not falling for their game. I’m too fly for that.

      There are 21,894 regulations currently being imposed on citizens and businesses, according to the government, who have counted. Do we not all feel this weighty burden bearing down on us daily? If anything, we should be looking for ways to loosen the burdens on the little-guy, the little cage-fighting guy.