Today's Guardian carried a report suggesting that Tessa Jowell and a variety of "progressive" ministers are pressing for Gordon Brown to include electoral reform in the Queen's Speech next week.
It's utterly absurd to think that introducing such a controversial measure at this juncture in the life of a government would be anything but a supreme waste of time and energy - and I wouldn't expect to see it included.
However I am especially struck at the irony that one of the measures that Jowell et al are pushing for is to reduce the voting age to sixteen.
These are the very same characters who in government have increasingly set up the constructs of a nanny state, part of which was to increase the age at which you can buy cigarettes from sixteen to eighteen.
Where is the logic in believing that sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds cannot be trusted to take decisions about their own health and wellbeing, yet they should be trusted to help decide the future direction of the country?
What David Cameron said at the party conference seems extremely apt here:
"We've got to stop treating children like adults and adults like children."
Too right.
