Funny? Maybe not...

Some time ago, someone posted up a petition on the No. 10 petitions site asking for Jeremy Clarkson to be made Prime Minister. It was obviously a joke, but 49,448 people supported it - which is probably more than would vote for Gordon these days. The petition has now closed.

Now, Number 10 is meant to respond to every petition. In this case, the response has been a little different. Instead of the usual cant - "we've considered this carefully but have decided that we know better", we have been given a video response. A camera shows the view on entering No. 10, scanning past the portraits of past PMs, then rests on a portrait of Clarkson before concluding "Maybe not...".

This is obviously a witty response to a joke petition. Or is it? The Tories have criticised the waste of money involved, which is a bit kneejerk, frankly, and somewhat weak as we can all see that the video must have taken all of 5 minutes to knock up, at best. Others have pointed to the video to prove that there is a real sense of humour in Downing Street. I think there is something more signficant going on. Let's assume that No. 10 decided to make a proper, serious response to the petition. What would it have said? How about:

Jeremy Clarkson can't possibly be Prime Minister because he has not been elected by the people in a General Election

Err, no, there's a small problem there, I think. Ok, how about:

You can't just huddle a few select people in a room to decide who should be PM.

Ooops, hang on, still a problem... Let's try:

Deciding the Prime Minister is not up to us, it's up to the people

Do you get my drift here?

So, instead, they made a (superficially) jokey video that avoided the issue. And it has been swallowed whole. But no; they don't have a sense of humour - they have a guilty conscience.