Osborne panders to Chinese calendar

The joke about there being more pandas in Scotland than there are Tory MPs is increasingly well worn.

That didn’t stop the SNP’s Pete Wishart managing to mangle it at the most recent session of Scottish Questions in the Commons and referring to Scotland Office minister David Mundell as a “lone panda”.

Certainly Mundell has an non-threatening teddy bear-esque demeanour but, unlike pandas, it’s not believed he goes to the toilet against trees while standing on his head.

Though Mundell was an unlikely visitor to Scottish music festival T in the Park in the summer and sometimes, at such events, needs must.

Recently it’s increasingly felt like the Tory traffic is going the other way with more senior Conservatives in China than endangered pandas.

The latest was Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, who flew out last week on a trade mission to convince the Chinese to buy British food including Weetabix, wine and chocolate or the O-Patz diet, as it quickly became known.

It’s easy to imagine Paterson, long-time leader at the top of the list of most attractive MPs, tucking into a breakfast of Weetabix, wine and chocolate at his Shropshire home of a morning while plotting the next move in his war against woodland animals. The latest figures show the cull he’s overseen failed to bag enough badgers to achieve its aim of curbing TB in cattle.

Paterson’s jaunt followed a high-profile Oriental outing for Tory big hitters George Osborne and Boris Johnson.

London Mayor Johnson of course stole the show not least with a less than magic analogy comparing the relationship between the UK and China with that between Harry Potter and his first girlfriend Cho Chang but Osborne was not entirely overshadowed by his travelling companion.

That may be worth noting in relation to any forthcoming leadership battle between the two. The Chancellor’s conviction and cunning may just be a match for BoJo’s bluff and buffoonery.

The big trip, however, comes next month when Prime Minister David Cameron finally goes to China.

He’s been trying to get back into the Chinese good books ever since he met with the Dalai Lama and found himself on their blacklist.

Meeting the spiritual leader of Tibet may have been the morally correct thing to do but it put out China’s communist leaders.

Alex Salmond, it should be noted, was out in China earlier this month drumming up business for Scotland. When the Dalai Lama stopped off in Scotland last year, panda fancier Salmond chose not to be introduced.

So Cameron’s imminent trip to China which ends an autumn itinerary that includes a summit in Sri Lanka followed by a tour of the Gulf before making for the Far East is a big deal as it will see him mend fences with the world’s biggest economy in an effort to increase opportunities for business, and economic growth.

It’s such a big deal that Chancellor George Osborne agreed to move his autumn budget back a day to December 5, to allow his boss time to get back. At this rate the “autumn” statement will be taking place in midwinter.

The change of date was announced in a tweet on social networking site Twitter.

That annoyed Speaker John Bercow, who ticked off the Government for not making a statement to parliament first.

But it wasn’t the only Tory technological blunder last week. The party apparently wiped from the internet all speeches made by the likes of David Cameron and George Osborne before 2010.

So George Osborne’s pledge to increase spending in power and Cameron’s praise for the openness of the internet disappeared and online robots used to block search engines from finding any trace of them.

Re-writing history and internet jiggery-pokery? Conservative Cameron and the Chinese Communists will likely get on just fine.