Questions to which the answer is no...

John Rentoul has been running (and running, and running) a sporadically amusing series of ‘Questions to which the answer is no’ on his Indy blog – a task made mildly easier by the fact that more or less every headline posed as a question should be answered in the negative.

It is, therefore, rather disappointing that he funked the opportunity to star in his own series.  In the latest round of his spat with Fraser Nelson, Rentoul states

Fraser Nelson, the Sarah Palin of the Tory party

Well, is he?  Or course he isn’t.  It is also, incidentally, about the thinnest justification for such a comparison imaginable.  In response to Nelson’s argument that he doesn’t want policies that are necessarily more right-wing, just different policies to the ones that are currently on offer, Rentoul comments

Sounds like Sarah Palin to me: different for the sake of clear blue water.

In other words, disagreeing with any aspect of the Tory leadership turns you into Sarah Palin.  Right. 

While I suppose it is understandable that Rentoul should recoil at the thought of disagreement from the machine (he is, after all, the Bormann of the Blairites) it is still a little dispiriting that the merest whisperings of criticism should give rise to such a hysterical over-reaction.  Something to bear in mind when the ‘Tory splits’ headlines come round again.