Staring into the tea leaves or the coffee grounds, what can I divine from Thursday's local election results? Can I indeed see anything, after all a week is a long time in politics, so what I sense may happen, may well not. But my tribal loyalty, my political allegiance, really hopes they do. The Tories were shafted, or more to the point, they were, to recycle something Neil Kinnock once said, "kebabed". Royally. Skewered.

 More than ever now the only words that can possibly any mention of the Tories is hapless or hopeless, or just both. Osbornes's poorly conceived budget started the ball rolling from which the tremors have n't settled even now, and it's over four or so weeks since he dropped his great clanger, and got engulfed by the backwash. How cack-handed could he even be if he had tried.

And Cameron, the tennis playing, horse riding, Murdochista, how joined up is his thinking? Ideologically driven to shrink the state and drive the privatisation stake through it, he offered up the nostrum of the Big Society, in other words, put it it all back to charity. That self help groups would spontaneously bloom and take over arms of the alleged failing state and turn public sector swine into charitable pearls. Except it never ran like that; the cottage industry self help pioneers are overwhelmed, out of the depth, spinning like dervishes in a world that the public sector knew expertly and could navigate through competently, providing the services we all need, whilst the well off philanthropists who Cameron hoped would take up the slack and pump money into their own pet projects, now don't want to, since Osborne desperate to appear on the side of the Hoi poloi (a species he has more than obvious deep disdain for), stopped the charitable tax advantages so keenly exploited by the uber wealthy, who now no longer want to play in the game. So why did he do that? Well, he had to do something after handing the wealthy a 5% tax cut, funded by a raid on the benefits of pensioners by the way.

 Imagine a country where the government is in cahoots with an extraordinarily media Baron, where they tell him days before they tell an elected parliament on where they stand (favourably) in relation to a commercial agreement which is to the overwhelming advantage of said Baron; where the purses of the poor and retired are picked to fund a generous tax break for the wealthy; and then the government slaps a tax on a common food item (the humble pasty). Could be that archetypal ruritanian tin pot state we occasionally read about in the small news items in the international section of the papers. But it's not. It's Britain.

How did Cameron think people were going to vote. Radar turned on? Runes read? Too indifferent, too out of touch, too arrogant to wonder? Who knows, who cares. They got thrashed on Thursday and I'm delighted, particularly as Cameron's deadly rival scraped through to become London's mayor. I've not a scintilla of enthusiasm and certainly no time for the blond do nothing Buffon. Nevertheless, imagine the night sweats Cameron's going to be having now. To the idealogues of the Tory right, Johnson is a winner, twice now (this conveniently ignores the support the blond Buffon got from an over obliging media. Take a bow, the London evening standard...)' whereas Cams, his erstwhile Bullingdon club buddie so obviously ain't. Somewhere deep in the heart of the Tory boondocks there'll be whisperings and plottings, cabals and conspiracies. They'll want him out and blondie in. It'll be like Shakespeare's Julius caesar set amongst the agas and private clubs of Mayfair; Cameron forever trembling, et tu, Boris?