I’ve been non-blogging for a few weeks. A lot of time spent in Crewe, helping deliver the most spectacular by-election success in 30 years for the Conservative Party. I suspect I enjoyed the result more than Joan Humble did.

It was sad, but unsurprising, the way so many in the Labour Party have turned on Gordon Brown. Now he is the problem. Remove him, worried Labour backbenchers say, and our problems will be solved. Of course, it is ridiculous, and bears no relation to the fact that Labour’s problems stem from being in power too long for any good they have been able to show. They are increasingly out-of-touch with the aspirations of the rest of us, and unable to see any linkage between what goes on in their political bubble, and what is happening in our daily lives.

Such disloyalty towards one who – as much as I can’t abide him or his Government – has given so many years of service, and who engendered such slavish adulation until so very recently, is sadly symptomatic of politics. There is little gratitude in politics. Those who benefitted in the past from others’ loyalty lose no time in trampling all over that loyalty when the pound signs start to flash before their eyes. Biographies – like Cherie Blair’s and John Prescott’s – trample over former collegiality and friendship in the interests of Mammon.

Just yesterday, we had reports that President Bush’s former press spokeman has written an entire book trashing just about everything the spokesman stood for, and defended, when in the job. Scott McLellan’s praise for the President when he left his job have suddenly changed into visceral, personal attacks. I am no defender of President Bush. He has been a massive disappointment – to put it mildly. I disapprove strongly of America’s growing isolationist direction. Whilst the Obamas and Clintons want to reach out anew to the world, at the same time the economic rhetoric of both sides is turning its back on free trade. In the spurious names of energy and food security, the US looks set to turn its back on the world. But I digress – as usual.

Loyalty is never easy, especially after the ties that bound you were severed. To my mind, genuine loyalty requires genuine friendship between two individuals. Without that friendship, what passes for loyalty is really just self-interest. And a friend is surely more than just an acquaintance you happen to share an office with, or know vaguely socially. A friend is someone whose interests and needs you would place before your own if they were in need. It is often better to have many acquaintances and fewer friends – but those friends are those you can truly, truly rely on. In politics, that probably matters more than in many areas.

Gordon Brown has probably spent many a night counting how many of his so-called friends have turned out to be anything but. Politics aside, it is a personal tragedy that one who had spent so long preparing himself for the highest office has found his occupancy of it to be such a disaster. But it is also a warning to beware of fair-weather friends, and not to plan your life on being the next Prime Minister but three. Cabinet ministers currently plotting would do well to dwell on this.

And if you wonder what this has to do with Blackpool and Cleveleys – well, philosophically, nothing, but I like to think you all deserve to get an idea of what sort of MP you would be electing in me. Back to local issues v v soon!