Smoke clears on week of chance remarks and remarkable chancers

Icalculate that I have known Robert Kilroy-Silk for nearly 30 years, since he was a thrusting young Labour backbencher whose ambition was as obvious as his 1970s perma-tan.

On that basis I will predict that the new UK Independence Party MEP for the East Midlands lacks the patience and political skill to become too much of a threat to the system. Despite his fame he's still too chippy.

Put it another way, he is no match for John Reid who followed him on to Radio 4's To d a y postresults programme on Monday morning - this in his capacity as Labour's Safe Pair of Hands. I have known Reid a mere 20 years.

But Kilroy and his allies will put the cat among the Euro pigeons all the same.His new career is an accident, the product of his antiIslam rant in The Express and sacking by the BBC. It is how politics works sometimes: a combative figure, a chance remark or (in this case) a meeting with Max Clifford, the publicist and selfstyled NHS champion, can start an instant media blaze.We have seen three such in the past few days on health.

As well as interpreting the Euro results, Mr Reid was busy on Monday explaining away his remark at a Labour 'big conversation' debate in south London:

that middle class do-gooders have an 'obsession'with stopping the working class from smoking.

'What enjoyment does a 21-yearold single mother of three get living in a council sink estate?' he asked.

The newspapers and the antismoking lobby were predictably outraged, but as muddled as Friday's Any Questions panel.Mr Reid wasn't trying to patronise, just the opposite.He is, after all, an ex-working class, ex-smoker himself.

And what was not reported widely was that he was simply reacting, sharply, to a suggestion from the audience that a ban on the sale of packs of 10 would stop the really poor buying fags at all.

Not that the Reid camp is complaining. The row got people talking about an issue ministers want discussed.We can look forward to a local ban on publicsmoking option appearing in Labour's manifesto.

A similar random sequence got David Hinchliffe in trouble the same day over that obesity report from his health select committee.

The now-notorious example in paragraph 2 actually spoke of 'extreme obesity [being] a contributory factor' in the death by heart failure of a three-yearold. But newspapers do not do words like 'contributory'.

When they tried to find out who the unnamed tot was - to hear her parents' story - they quickly found that the medics in the case felt misrepresented. The child had a genetic defect.

Labour's Mr Hinchliffe had to go on To d a y to defend himself. The doctors had read newspaper hype instead of his report, he complained.

As in Mr Reid's case, MPs on the committee seem to have mixed feelings about the experience. It did get people talking about fat and, yes, they did hear of other cases, almost as bad: a child of 12 weighing over 20 stone, for instance.When they sought details of that case, incidentally, the health authority clammed up, so I am told.

The third case in my sights is more macro-politics than micro.

Last week Oliver Letwin was reported, admittedly not widely, as saying the NHS would not exist in five years' time if the Tories win power.Most journalists did not repeat the claim, which emanated from Treasury sources, because there was no evidence. But Henry McRory, an official at Tory HQ whom I like, insists that the shadow chancellor was misquoted.He had said the NHS's current bureaucracy would not exist in five years. Not the same thing.

More important, says Henry, last month Mr Letwin did not tell a man who urged him to slash public spending to 30 per cent of national wealth that his disagreement was merely 'tactical' - ie that it would cost him the election to say that.He had said his difference was also 'philosophical' - ie Mr Letwin thinks the idea is wrong.

Yet I reported the original claim.Why? Because Labour produced a transcript. The word 'tactical' seemed plausible and consistent with the Letwin world view.Henry McRory has no rival text. But he is adamant.

So are my Labour friends.

'Letwin's a gaffe merchant.He didn't complain at the time. It was a fair cop, ' says one electionhardened veteran. It is tough in the election killing zone. l