David Cameron was unable to comment on Alan Duncan’s embarrassment yesterday because he was on a cross-channel ferry. Now he’s back and the Tory leader has ticked off his front bencher. But Cameron seems to be saying he is secure in his job.

For now: I await the Sunday papers with interest. Their Holy Grail? A poolside pic of Duncan, replete with pina colada - or whatever - at a luxury hotel.

UPDATE

Allegra Stratton at the Guardian has a good scoop about Team Cameron mulling plans to cut cabinet ministers’ salaries by up to £20,000.

This is timely because it helps put the Tories back on the front foot over pay sleaze in the wake of “Duncangate”.

Let’s see if Cameron actually carries it out though. A pay freeze I can see. A slight pay cut in line with deflation, maybe. But £20,000?

A spokesman says: “It’s no secret we have said we’re looking at the cost of politics. For example, we have taken the lead on MPs’ pensions. But no decisions have been made.”

If Cameron is serious about this - and it would play well with the public - then why not come out and say it? Unless he’s saving it for the final pre-election sprint, of course.

Of the 20-odd Tory MPs stepping down at the next election a quarter are called Michael.

Michael Mates, Michael Howard, Michael Jack and Michael Spicer are all on their way out.

And now it transpires that Michael Ancram (pictured above) is likely to leave before next year - according to the ConservativeHome website.

A co-incidence? Or something more sinister?

UPDATE

A concerned reader writes in to ask whether Tory MP Michael Fallon is also heading for green pastures. The answer is no. At least I hope not; Fallon is on track to become a forceful select committee chair (Treasury) when John McFall departs.

FURTHER UPDATE

More on the Telegraph website about Ancram’s departure

There’s a widespread idea that Team Cameron are obsessed with the West Wing, just as New Labour types have always been avid observers.

The idea has been repeated lately in The Guardian. Elsewhere it’s been reported that Cameron wants to model Downing Street’s layout on the West Wing if he becomes prime minister.

Andrew Rawnsley, in the Observer, recently pointed out that:

“To visit Norman Shaw South is to see a political machine whirring beautifully,” writes Fraser Nelson in the most recent edition of the magazine. “It is like a British version of  The West Wing: the key players walking in and out of their rooms and having 45-second impromptu meetings in the corridor.”

In similar vein, a report in Friday’s Independent talks about “a cast of advisers, tacticians, policy wonks and spin doctors that would not look out of place walking the corridors of President Bartlet’s The West Wing”.

But does Cameron actually like the programme?

Er, no. I’m told that the Tory leader has watched a couple of episodes and “just couldn’t get into it“. Apparently he is more of a fan of The Wire. I don’t blame him.

George Osborne, however, does like the West Wing. So there you have it.

UPDATE

Cam has apparently told someone else that he may not be that bothered about The Wire, either. So what do we know for certain? That he enjoys Lark Rise to Candleford, whatever that is.

It appears to be a costume drama made by the BBC.

David Cameron’s use of the word “tw*t” has certainly generated some debate on a quiet news day.

Not sure it quite rivals the John Spellar incident 10 years ago, however, when the then armed forces minister declared: “These cuts must be stopped”. At least that’s what he meant to say. An erroneous “n” crept in to the word “cuts”, giving an entirely different meaning. As Paul Linford points out, the phrase never made it into Hansard but has still become a Commons legend.

Here is the Wikipedia definition of the T word. Its origins lie in Ancient Norse word for “forest clearing.”

There has been low-level speculation for ages that George Osborne may not necessarily end up as chancellor of the exchequer, an idea rubbished by senior Tory officials.

It is in the spirit of mischief-making that someone has passed me the fringe agenda for the Tory conference in October.

Some of the most senior Tories will speak alone: William Hague, Ken Clarke, Alan Duncan. Others are in pairs; “Villiers and Shapps”, “Grieve and Grayling”, “Clark and Herbert”, “Willetts and Miller”.

A Tuesday session on the economy features an appearance by “Hammond and Osborne“. Shouldn’t that be the other way around?

Lord Myners gives short thrift today to Tory plans to kneecap the Financial Services Authority and transfer many of its powers to the Bank of England.

In an interview with City AM (the freesheet) the City minister says the central bank neither wants nor has the right skills for the job. He portrays the Bank as an ivory tower full of chin-stroking academics.

“They (Tories) have misjudged the competence and culture of the Bank of England. The Bank is a very academic institution. It is not actually about doing things,” he said.

“The Bank is good at looking at the wider picture but it does not want to be supervising and reflecting on individual banks. Do we want the Bank of England distracted by supervising building societies and insurance companies?”

I was going to blog on Monday about the flaws in George Osborne’s plans but Paul Murphy on FT Alphaville beat me to it. And here is another colleague, Paul J Davies, making a similar point.

Ultimately the reason why financial regulation often fails is because the smart guys aren’t working for the FSA or the SEC: they are making millions of pounds/dollars in the banks.

Chief executives of banks didn’t understand some of the financial products cooked up by youths with PhDs in advanced mathematics. How can we expect low-ranking regulators to be on top of these innovations?

This point is made in a shrewd letter to the FT today by Tim Price of PFP Wealth Management:

“As to the likelihood of the Bank attracting a sufficiently experienced and qualified staff, this gets to the absolute heart of the problem. Short of receiving infinite remuneration, no regulator will ever realistically be able to compete with the so-called “talent” on Wall Street and the City, even if that talent amounts to self-enrichment rather than wider wealth creation.”

See the FT’s Arena blog debate: should the FSA be scrapped?

David Cameron is being offered plenty of advice on the Andy Coulson saga from friends and foes alike: quickly find out exactly what happened, sack him regardless, don’t worry about it unless Coulson is directly implicated, or fight your man’s corner against a politically motivated campaign.

Cameron seems to have been reassured last night by Coulson’s “upright” answers. You have to presume that Coulson’s private assurances were more comprehensive than his public statement last night, which did not touch on whether he was aware of any illegal activities while he was editing the News of the World. (There is, of course, still no evidence to suggest that Coulson did know what the reporters working under him were up to.)

I’m just as intrigued to know what their conversation was like before Coulson was appointed. Did he guarantee Cameron that the scandal would never resurface? Did he say he knew of no other cases of hacking phone messages? Did Cameron ask such detailed questions? And if he did, were the answers complete and unequivocal?

This conversation is years old. Coulson’s fate will probably be determined by other factors. But this private chat was nonetheless one of the founding moments in the Coulson-Cameron relationship. The two men went on to trust one another implicitly. Will that still be the case once this phone hacking story runs its course?

UPDATE

James Kirkup at the Telegraph examines Cameron’s “relaxed” reaction.

You would have thought that the prime minister would now have his public sector spending numbers at his fingertips - given that David Cameron has made the issue his focal point for three sessions of Prime Minister’s Questions in succession.

Apparently not. “Capital spending…will fall after 2011″ he said. Then, later: “Capital spending will rise to 2011 and then fall.”

This is less wrong than his previous PMQ claim that capital spending would keep rising until the Olympics (2012).

But it’s still wrong.

There was a clarification towards the end of the half-hour session when Brown said that in fact the figure would fall in 2010. His admission came after prompting by a Tory MP who reminded him that the Treasury’s own capital spending figures show £44bn this year and £36bn next year.

Some pundits are wondering whether Cameron should start following a different strategy and stop using up all his questions on the same theme. They ask whether the impact is blunted by repetition. I’m not sure. After all, Brown’s reputation was built on his solid grasp of numbers.

UPDATE

I forgot to mention Brown’s preposterous claim that the Tories were expecting unemployment to rise in the coming years - as if he was not.

Surely the Treasury’s own economic forecasts are based on unemployment rising substantially from today’s levels? Given that this is the consensus of almost all independent forecasters.