Exit Music (for a minister)

One might consider it conventional wisdom that the English do political sex scandals better than the Americans -- the mixture of repressed characters, personal foibles, tabloid hysteria, along with the absence of Ken Starr, leads to a more entertaining spectacle than the USA's neo-Puritans are capable of serving up. We'll grant though the fine efforts of would-be Homeland Security nominee Bernie Kerik to close the gap, for who amongst us doesn't love the detail of how he used an apartment donated for emergency workers to rest near the 9/11 site for his bonkathons with publishing impresario Judith Regan?

Still though, even with Bernie's antics (and much like the benchmark for success in Iraq), the goalposts keep moving. The problems of UK Home Secretary David Blunkett have made the papers in the US a few times, and they form one part of the ongoing comedy/farce that is the Spectator magazine. Blunkett now faces a second accusation of using his influence to expedite a visa for his paramour's nanny, and provided grist for the mill for those who question his perception of his predicament via his performance at a Christmas party:

[London Times] According to reports this morning, Mr Blunkett sang to MPs at a backbenchers' Christmas party on Monday night at the Albert Hotel, not far from the Commons.
The Guardian reported today that the Home Secretary, who had been expected to keep his head down, handed out the words - 'Pick yourself up, dust yourself down and start all over again' - to the Jerome Kern standard first sung by Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the 1936 film Swing Time.
Among those watching was John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister who was mocked by Mr Blunkett in a biography of him published this week. "Thank God he's gone," Mr Prescott is said to have commented after Mr Blunkett left the party.

He thus joins a fine tradition of singing ministers; we think of UK Chancellor Norman Lamont's reference to Edith Piaf after the pound exchange rate collapse, and for a more obscure reference for our Irish readers, we vaguely recall Albert Reynolds in a TV skit singing "put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone" around the time that it turned out that Taoiseach Charlie Haughey was tapping his Cabinet ministers' phones. Anyway, we'll be keeping an eye out to see whether Dubya's cabinet can deploy their knowledge of old music standards to good effect.