Littlejohn's House of Fun

The Daily Mail''s most succesful columnist delivers the coup de grace to New Labour, as the nation voted them out of office. He is not only tough on Brown and the causes of Brown, but devastatingly funny about ''Elf and Safety'', ''Yuman Rights'', the Surveillance Society and all the bureacratic absurdities that make modern life worse than anything George Orwell ever imagined.

But, as the new introductory material reveals, the coalition of Lib Dem and Conservative also means same meat, different gravy. And already we have the first casualty of the cabinet in David Laws, another rich MP exploiting his position to claim expenses paid to his secret lover.

''Littlejohn has been ... a vivid exponent of a great British columnar style that stretches back five centuries or more. He''s a distant, bastard cousin of Thomas Nash, Daniel Defoe and Alexander Pope. Cassandra and Bernard Levin might justly buy him a pint in the Chesire Cheese. Like or loathe him, he''s the real, talented deal.'' Observer