IT was a summer of heroes. Former US President Bill Clinton flew to North Korea on a one-man rescue mission deep behind enemy lines, and flew back triumphant with two freed female American hostages (although exactly what happened on the eight-hour flight back from Pyongyang to the US remains a mystery).

Former Russian President Vladimir Putin ripped off his shirt, piloted a mini-submarine to the bottom of a lake, rode a horse along a trail and beat the whole of Russia in a Judo match after reminding them he’s an ex-KGB agent.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, taking some time off from running three Italian television channels, several Italian magazines, Italy’s biggest football team and Italy, relaxed in the company of teenage models – to the apparent disgust of his wife and daughter, and the apparent amusement of everyone else.

The King of England, Peter Mandelson III, returned from the dead, took over the UK government and then went on holiday. And Chief Minister Terry Le Sueur… Well, there’s no easy way to say this, partly because he’s a very likeable bloke, and partly because it is difficult to imagine him pulling anything Machiavellian, but Senator Le Sueur went on the spin offensive like Shane Warne ripping into the English lower-order batsmen.

First, he tried to stamp ‘CASE CLOSED’ all over the incinerator eurogate blunder (it ain’t), and second he told the unions that he was prepared to negotiate over department cuts and the pay freeze (oh no he ain’t).

Sorry, Terry, the incinerator blunder isn’t over. Not by a long way. Anything from £539,000 to £5.4m is the estimate from Senator Ben Shenton, who being the director of an asset management company is probably in a position to know about these things, and with the European economies recovering from the recession quicker than the UK, there’s no reason to think that there will be a happy ending to all this.

And as for ‘negotiating’ over the cuts – if the unions are rock-solid that they don’t want the cuts (which they are) and you are rock-solid that you do (which you are), then what you’re doing is not negotiating.
It’s arguing.

ROBBER barons, the Red Baron, Baron Greenback. Picking up on a theme here? Barons are bad news, bad medicine and bad dudes. For your authentic bad guy, go for a Baron every time.

The latest in this fine string of pantomime villains is a five-time loser called Baron Wallace of Saltaire, who took it upon himself to tell the world that the Channel Islands’ centuries-old deal to govern themselves should be rewritten because, to sum up his argument, the UK is short of cash.

Well, you just can’t argue with a rock-solid argument like that, so don’t even try.
Wait, there’s more. He added that the prospect of full independence for the Channel Islands was ‘horrifying’, because there was so much money here that we would end up, you know, all corrupted.

Where does this guy get his nerve? Having failed to get elected five times as a Liberal Democrat candidate – thanks Wikipedia – this guy becomes a member of the House of Lords.

OK, so Baron Wallace is an unelected politician, working for a party that has not exactly been untouched by recent corruption stories in the MP expenses furore, lecturing us about the dangers of corruption. Beautiful.

Unfortunately, when it was time to slap this silly upstart down and put him in his place, Senator Le Sueur was a bit ‘spun out’ after his exertions with the incinerator and the unions, and didn’t get involved.

Was this just going to be left to stand? Who would come to our rescue? What’s that, a thundering of hooves? Bugles sounding? And over the ridge emerges…former Senator Christopher Lakeman! And he’s got some fighting talk lined up.

A cynical attempt to grab headlines during the silly season! THUNK! Does he have the full facts or his own agenda? BAMMO! Simply not true? KAPOW!

Awesome. Took me right back to the days of Advocate Lakeman at his glorious best in the States Chamber. For this alone, he is the (please note the small ‘p’) Week in Politics politician of the week.