This past ten days has shown how quickly the political roadshow moves on. The Friday before last pressure was mounting on the Chancellor, George Osborne over some aspects of his Budget, in particular a proposal to reduce one of the benefits paid to some disabled people. Of course it wasn't as straightforward as it was portrayed but perception is, if not everything in politics, certainly almost everything and it was inevitable that the proposal was, rightly, going nowhere, a graceful retreat was the most sensible approach and that may well have happened if the unexpected resignation of the very man who would have had to implement the policy, Iain Duncan Smith or IDS as he is known at Westminster. IDS is a principled man with a deep Christian faith, he wasn't going to be talked out of his decision. So what has been described as the biggest challenge to the Prime Minister's authority, certainly since the General Election, engulfed Downing Street.
All governments suffer resignations, some forced, some on a matter of principle or policy. How much all this troubled the majority of the public is debatable; all the polls show that very few voters can name more than a handful of politicians and that is unlikely to stretch to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions despite him having the largest budget in government. After the weekend media going into overdrive we returned to Westminster on Monday morning to hear a statement from the Prime Minister reporting back from the most recent of interminable Euro summits and from Stephen Crabb, the replacement for IDS.
Stephen is an excellent appointment; the Labour Party like nothing better than be able to depict all Tories as wealthy toffs. We have our share of wealthy MPs but there are plenty of wealthy Socialist members as well. Stephen was brought up on a council estate by his mother alter she split from his violent father and as a result knows how tough life can be for many families and is passionate about improving life opportunities for everyone.
He confirmed what had been announced over the weekend the changes to disability benefits had been abandoned. The following day George Osborne was at the Dispatch Box; Labour members tried to pin on him that the whole Budget had been a disaster and his change of plan had left an enormous gaping hole, something that Labour know all about, in his plans to abolish the deficit but they didn't lay a glove on him; with one bound he was free, just has he had been after the tax credit storm.
The following day at Prime Minister's Questions the expectation was that Jeremy Corbyn would give the PM a hard time but overnight a mysterious list had appeared showing which Labour MPs were Corbyn loyalists and which were to varying degrees hostile. David Cameron had a field day and wiped the floor with the hapless Mr Corbyn.
Talk in tea room was dominated by this list some Labour MPs were disappointed to have been shown to be not as hostile to Corbyn as they really were. 'Was there an appeal system?' one asked, surely there must be a way of showing how hostile I really am.'
And so just five days after this supposedly massive threat to David and George the caravan had moved on and debate was about the price of gas, train services, potholes and those everyday things that worry our constituents - not that benefits don't, they most certainly do, but normality had returned and many wouldn't have noticed the headlines had become fish and chip papers and thoughts turned to the holiday weekend.
As usual I’m writing my column on a Thursday evening on the 19.03 train out of King’s Cross reflecting on yet another speech earlier in the day about the need for a through service between Grimsby/Cleethorpes and London; we’ll get one eventually I’m sure.
Listening to the radio news before I left the office the main story was the conviction of the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. Many of you will remember the Balkans War in the early 1990s as the former Yugoslavia broke apart and one incident in particular; the genocide of over 8000 at Srebrenica.
Two years ago I visited Srebrenica on a delegation led by Colonel Bob Stewart MP who was the head of British Forces in Bosnia when the international community were trying to restore order. The visit was organised by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). We met some of the families of those murdered and I recall visiting the centre where there are rooms full of human remains and the ICMP work tirelessly trying to identify the remains so that they can be properly laid to rest and the families come to terms with what happened.
A sobering experience and cause for reflection especially as we think back to the events of the first Easter.