A toast to independent Dorset

There was a shrewd old Tory MP called John Stokes. He was not on the left of the party. Indeed, I once told him that he was the right pole. He chuckled at the compliment. Others — including some Conservatives — would not have regarded that as a favourable assessment, and often found his views dismaying. He enjoyed that and, to encourage it, would play the role of caricature reactionary. This rarely failed to get a rise. There is a comparison with that consummate ironist Jacob Rees-Mogg, though Jacob is also a serious Tory philosopher. John’s many friends could not have alleged that of him. He once aroused derision in the House by saying that things had come to a pretty pass: people were talking about politics in the pubs. What would he have made of our present discontents?

The British people are now divided into two contending factions. There are those who are desperate to talk about Brexit. There are those who are desperate to change the subject. My forays into a couple of rural pubs have led me to two other firm conclusions about public opinion.  First, politicians are held in almost universal contempt. Sometimes, the locals would exempt their own member; otherwise it was à la lanterne with the lot of them. I would argue that this was unfair; one must not judge the entire parliamentary race by Theresa May. But I was swimming against an implacable current.

The second is that everyone wants the whole business over with. As the French said at the beginning of the last war: ‘Il faut en finir.’ Admittedly, that did not have a happy ending: even so, it might work for us. As I write, it still seems possible that we may stumble out of the EU on Friday.