Terrier Cairns has served his sentence

The rehabilitation of Alun Cairns is overdue.

Ever since being caught out making a silly comment on a BBC programme almost designed to produce such comments, the question has been for how much longer must he suffer.

The key to his return to making a full contribution to political life lies with Tory leader David Cameron.

It was Mr Cameron who suspended the South West AM from his post as prospective candidate for Vale of Glamorgan. Mr Cairns’s comments about Italians being “greasy wops” were not really offensive, merely not the sort of thing which an aspiring politician should say. The Tories’ reaction can be counted as political correctness going too far.

One of Mr Cairns’s non-Tory enemies in the Assembly guesses that Mr Cairns will stay suspended until just before the election, at which point Mr Cameron would parachute in a woman. Not that such a person would have any idea of what’s going to happen.

Mr Cairns can be seen to be still very worried about the situation. His comment was obviously so out of character; I’d blame it entirely on the radio programme. It ill befits some BBC journalists to be holier than everyone else on an issue such as this.

Mr Cairns can see every reason why he should be reinstated (he would, wouldn’t he !). Vale of Glam is a marginal seat although often previously held by his party. A united party with a strong campaign is necessary to win it; Mr Cairns himself retains the constituency’s support; I myself would add that parachuting anyone else in, particular from over the border, would be solidly supported by MP John Smith (! as it would save him the seat), but by hardly anyone else in Wales.

Mr Cairns readily admits Mr Cameron has other things on his mind at the moment.

Probably the best clue to how Mr C will move comes from two journalists who have interviewed him recently.

Dave Cornock reports Mr Cameron’s words on the subject in his blog : “He works extremely hard. He cares passionately about the Vale of Glamorgan. He said something he shouldn’t have. He made a mistake, he is very apologetic about that. I hope we can settle this soon.”

Much the same was said to Nick Speed, of HTV.

So it seems that the Tories’ errant terrier will be back on board soon.  Then it’ll be up to Assembly leader Nick Bourne as to whether he gets back his spokesman’s job on education (unfortunately, Andrew Davies is doing a truly excellent job there, indicating the strength in depth that the Tory group possesses); and his chairmanship of the finance committee (newcomer Angela Burns, Carmarthen West, is currently in place).

One wonders whether Mr Cairns might have reached Westminster before he gets the chance again to second-guess Jane Hutt.