It requires the kind of "rat-like cunning" that Nicholas Tomalin reckoned was one of the three essential qualities for any good journalist.
Carr, a former NSW premier, pleaded with Labor to be more "canny" and "cunning" in its political strategies and said he knew the Labor government had "lost its way" when it picked a fight over media law reform in the lead-up to a federal election – a move which "tore up the Neville Wran playbook of how to get re-elected".
The fear is, here and everywhere, that this autumn's hardships are just the beginning: there will come a point when no amount of ingenuity, flexibility and cunning can stand in the way of empty coffers.
Whether it's intentional or accidental, its gradual unbundling is not in the best interests of the people of the United Kingdom or any part of it.' Oh, a warning to those who might mistake Mr Ancram's amiable, consensual approach for a lack of low political cunning.
Repealing the Human Rights Act or even quitting the convention it codifies seemed a cunning distraction from the messy compromises to come with the EU.
There were mutterings that the chancellor's refusal to rule out a rise in VAT the previous day had been a cunning plan to wrong foot Ed Miliband but it was just as like the prime minister was making up policy on the hoof.
"But I'm worried because the other side is cunning, deceitful and back-stabbing.
"I was struck by the lack of canniness, caution, cunning," Carr said of Labor's period in power since 2007.
Yet for all this cunning surgery, there is a flip-side that makes the scheme harder to swallow – namely the insertion of 5,000 sq metres of commercial space in containers that do not even try to disguise their role as strap-on cash cows.
Osborne's speech to the conference confirmed that what his colleagues admire about him is not his telegenic charm or rhetorical skills – he is lacking in both departments – but his political cunning, which was on show once more.
The web of their relations was shot through with these ambivalences, shade and bright twined with such cunning that their pattern never settled.
