Never mind though. It’s not as though I’ve missed all that much, since very little on the British political scene has changed in that time. Yes, we may have had a General Election last year, but the Government’s policies have remained largely identical.

And so it came to past that the electorate were duped into believing that voting out New Labour and voting in Blue Labour – sorry, the Conservatives – would constitute a real and perceivable change in the way the country was run. Sadly though, they were wrong.

No longer does the ‘terrible’ and ‘awful’ Mr Gordon Brown head up our Westminster administration, but instead that nice young man, Mr ‘Dave’ Cameron, who in contrast to the great clunking fist seems unable to do wrong in the eyes of much of the liberal media. Such was the negative media frenzy at the time, people blamed Mr Brown if their train was late, or they dropped their coffee on the floor, or their shoelaces snapped while they were tying them, or if it rained.

Quite why Mr Brown was apparently so ‘terrible’ and ‘awful’ very few people remember or care. They’re just glad that he’s gone, and anyway, isn’t the new Prime Minister so much better looking than the last? He just looks the part doesn’t he? And hasn’t he got such a lovely, well dressed wife? She has such nice hats. And doesn’t he make such good speeches (though one can never quite remember what they were about)? And so on and so on.

In the meantime the steady process of our MPs giving away yet more of our sovereignty to the EU has quietly continued without opposition. State expenditure and borrowing has continued to rise at an even faster rate than under Labour, despite boasts of ‘putting the finances in order’ and talk of those nasty, evil and increasingly non-existent cuts. Crime has gone up. So has immigration. And our taxes too. Yet some people just fail to notice, so distracted are they by the bread and circuses of modern British politics and media.

A great storm is approaching though, one that even those caught up in the usual media circuses of the moment won’t be able to ignore forever. The crisis in Greece is likely only the beginning of it, and quite where we will all be in another two years time is anyone’s guess – but I think we can safely predict that it’s not sunlit uplands which lie ahead. It’s going to be downhill from here on in.

Labour backbencher, John McDonnell, and Shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, call for a swift inquiry into the email leaks and those responsible for the digital comments. The end of the world as we know it beckons.

Who actually cares? Certainly not me, though it seems that the usual suspects in the media and in the blogosphere have worked themselves up into a mad feeding frenzy over what amounts to be nothing more than a complete non-issue.

Nobody living outside the Westminster bubble actually cares at all either. Real people with real jobs and families are either too busy dealing with their own financial problems, as our economy falls into the worst recession for decades, or worrying about more important issues from health to immigration. Perhaps this is why the British National party are rapidly gaining traction in local elections at the expense of all the main parties?

In fact, this whole rather sad episode played out in Westminster just goes to further highlight how completely out of touch our political class have become. They’ve made more fuss over a few pathetic emails than they have over many, many other issues which are actually important to the electorate. This will only serve to drive yet more voters into the arms of the racist BNP.

Even before Samuel Coates had left the ConHome fold to work for David Cameron’s bland speechwriting team, the website had become almost entirely sycophantic towards the Conservative party leadership and the site’s front page often resembled little more than an MPs press release area.

In changing the text of the banner I suppose Tim Montgomerie has at least now had the decency to publicly admit that the true purpose of ConservativeHome is to pursue the interests of the Conservative party and that he will use his site to focus almost entirely on the David Cameron project which has itself very little in the way of conservatism behind it.

In recent months ConservativeHome’s pages seem to have been increasingly filled with the strange and often absurd witterings of those like Louise Bagshawe on CentreRight (a woman who is for some peculiar reason taken rather seriously by some few Conservative party members and MPs) and almost entirely devoid of critical comment and opinion. As such it is neither independent in content or comment and therefore, I would have thought, no longer a website that merits more than a cursory glance.

It is also a rare occasion when I will not in some way directly involve mention of the European Union (oh no, I did it again!) or what I would deem similarly serious political matters or events.

So, as it happens, I noticed that a few of the self obsessed egos who involved themselves in 18 Vanity Street (which amusingly collapsed last year) but chose not to move sideways onto Stephan Shakespeare’s PoliticsHome project have reappeared in the team behind a new magazine called TotalPolitics.

Rather unsurprisingly the TotalPolitics magazine (much like its staff) will really only be interested in the soap opera of the Westminster Village rather than anything that could be even considered vaguely serious. I am not the only one of this opinion.

Yet, despite the magazine being funded in part by Lord Ashcroft and released to much fan fare on some few blogs, I think it may now well be a good time to place your bets on how long it will be before it goes the way of Doughty Street down the pan.

Since TotalPolitics will be sent free of charge to all politicians from our irrelevant MPs down to local district level and also many journalists, this seems to cancel out most of the people who may have actually bothered to buy it in the first place (another reason I think that this is no more than yet another ego trip for its producers and editors.) I mean really, would anyone actually want to pay to read yet more Westminster gossip – especially when (if you so chose) you can read it on the net for free?

Still, until the time that TotalPolitics completely collapses and disappears off the radar, I thought I would take the opportunity to participate in their Top 100 UK Political Blogs. You have to rate your top ten, so here below are mine:

1. EU Referendum
2. Peter Hitchens
3. Sam Tarran
4. Daniel Hannan
5. Archbishop Cranmer
6. ConservativeHome
7. Burning Our Money
8. The Huntsman
9. England Expects
10. Bruno Waterfield

I suspect however that we can all probably guess who will make the top of the final published list – Iain Dale, Paul Staines, Phil Hendren etc. the usual group of self promoting friends who enjoy nothing more than engaging in meaningless tittle-tattle and largely irrelevant gossip.

Much like the red top newspapers these blogs tend to have the most readers (and therefore will accumulate the most votes,) not because they are actually any good in my opinion, but simply because they have become a well established set (due to the fact that they continually promote one another) and that, bar one or two, they publish the sort of Westminster village crap that those in the Westminster village like reading.

In 2006 I managed to make 51st on APCO Wordwide’s list of Top Conservative Blogs – but I have a sneaking suspicion that I won’t be on there this time around. Also I challenge those on the list above to come up with their top ten blogs – not that they will of course but I thought I would just mention it anyway.

Some websites have been wishing Sam Coates well, and I suppose for me not to do so would seem somewhat mean-hearted considering what a golden political opportunity this is for him. So, very well done and congratulations to you Sam – best of luck in your new position.

I remember once meeting Sam outside the Highcliffe hotel on the cliffs of Bournemouth at the Conservative Party Conference in 2006. The poor boy was standing by the garden gate handing out some expensively produced 18 Vanity (Doughty) Street adverts to those leaving that day’s conference proceedings.

I spoke to him for about ten minutes or so and thought he seemed like a decent enough chap – but then most of the people in this party do until you really get to know them. I have also been pretty certain for some time now that Sam would eventually move on from ConservativeHome to pastures new because he had been in a position to build up a long list of contacts.

However, one does have to express more than a little scepticism at the decision by Cameron’s office to bring young Sam into the inner fold. Taking nothing away from Sam who is I’m sure a fine upstanding young man with all the qualities a speechwriter requires, the motivation behind this is actually, I think, a classic case of divide and rule by David Cameron – a tactic of which Tony Blair and the Labour party have in the past been very fond.

As a major part of the ConservativeHome team with Tim Montgomerie, Sam Coates has effectively played an equal part in creating a website that was at one point in time (about two years ago in fact) a major thorn in the Conservative leadership’s side. It was often critical, piercing and thought provoking in its comment and content and very widely read by party members.

In the past two years the Conservative hierarchy has lessened that pain considerably by wining and dining the two ConHome editors. This has been to such an extent that far from seeking the truth and standing up for some traditional conservative values as Tim Montgomerie says, ConservativeHome at times resembles nothing more than an MPs press release area and rarely makes any critical remarks at all concerning the Cameron project.

Yet, despite its decline in recent years, ConHome does at times still have the ability to embarrass certain high profile MPs and the party leadership. Therefore, what better way was there for the Conservatives to help finally finish off the ConHome coalition than offer one of its editors a highly paid speechwriting job working directly for the party leader?

One also has to wonder where Tim Montgomerie has managed to acquire a supposed pot of £25-50k to hire new staff members to replace Sam. I would have thought it highly likely that ConHome is being funded by the Conservative Party itself. Perhaps that is another issue for another time though.