Shadowplay

Personally speaking, your very humble junior host is not a big fan of being conned. Outside of entertaining pursuits such as the cinema or a magic show most cons are of the negative variety. So, how to explain this:

Mr. Brown survived a closed-door meeting on Monday with Labor Party members of Parliament, including 350 from the House of Commons. Although those attending said a handful of lawmakers had spoken harshly against the prime minister, with some demanding he resign, they described participants as applauding vigorously when Mr. Brown admitted personal but undefined "flaws" and pledged to change his governing style, in particular by listening more carefully to the demands of Labor backbenchers.

How long Mr. Brown would keep his pledge to abandon the "bunker mentality" and bullying cited by many of his Labor critics seemed open to question. One of his principal cabinet allies, Ed Balls, emerged from the meeting to tell the BBC that the rebellious faction should "just shut up and get on with doing our job for the British people."

To be a fly on the wall. Here you have a room full of con artists, it is their very profession, being addressed by one of their own, yet they line up like easy marks, swallow the bait and find themselves willingly conned. The mind reels at what the participants must have told themselves in order to believe what they were hearing, self-delusional beyond doubt.

There is the old saying about fooling me once, shame on you .... fooling me twice, shame on me. Does anyone know how the saying goes at the tenth iteration of being fooled? Eleventh? Other?