It was Dennis Healey who famously said of being attacked by Tory Geoffrey Howe that it was like “being savaged by a dead sheep”.
That came to mind at the weekend when I was attacked by Tory MP David Mundell, who is called “Fluffy” by his pals.
Mundell launched his brave broadside to a half-empty hall in the safety of the Tory Conference in Edinburgh.
He was ever so frightfully upset that the SNP might be holding the balance of power at Westminster in 75 days’ time.
Fluffy was once described as the £1 million man not what he is worth as a transfer fee but because that is what the Tories spent on their election campaign in Scotland in 2010. He was their only result one solitary MP.
Then again, Mundell certainly has staying power.
Since 2010 he has deputised for no less than three Liberal secretaries of state as part of the Tory/Liberal alliance. I bet not one person reading this column could name all three.
Nobody knows what the Scotland Office does. The present incumbent, Alistair Carmichael, actually called for its abolition in 2007 when he discovered the 20 staff were writing an average of two official letters a year and holding lots of “soirees”.
Now Carmichael and Mundell, the Liberal/Tory dream team, sign the letters but we sign the cheques. This fundamentally silly department spends a mind boggling £8 million of public money in still achieving precisely nothing.
Soon it will all be over. Liberal support is now so low that it is difficult to measure while Mundell is set to lose his own seat in Dumfriesshire to the SNP.
David “Fluffy” Mundell, the last Tory MP in Scotland, heading for extinction just like the dodo.