"My advice to people is to tell the truth because it always comes out anyway" - Gordon Brown

SO, how long will it take for the deal with the Democratic Unionists to come out, my dear Prime Minister?

A £1.2 billion sweetener for Northern Ireland to get the Anti-Terror Bill passed, on top of the £2.7 billion bribe ahead of the Crewe and Nantwich by-election.

A cool four billion quid that could have been ploughed into public services or used to cut fuel duties.

Had it not been for David Davis's implosion this afternoon, Mr Brown would have been facing a renewed attack on his leadership; as it is, Tory leader David Cameron is the one under the microscope.

Conservative MEPs forced to quit after fiddling their expenses, his own party chairman using her Parliamentary allowance to pay her nanny, and now the capitulation on terror followed by Mr Davis's inexplicable act of political hara-kiri.

    

A crusader for liberty indeed! This is a man who not too long ago called for the reintroduction of hanging, a man described by Professor Tony Travers of the London School of Economics as "Genghis Khan on speed".

If a man is released without charge after 42 days he's still alive; if someone is executed and is subsequently exoneratered, there is no recompense, no way to right that wrong - he's dead.

To show this man up for the self-aggrandising, pompous bore he is, Labour should join the Liberal Democrats in boycotting the Haltemprice and Howden by-election.

Do the opposite of what everyone expects, leave him with a clear run unopposed.

That'll leave the phoney with egg on his face!

• Watch the Prime Minister's monthly press conference
• Relive the Shadow Home Secretary's moment of madness