Diary - 22 November 2018

‘Away with the cant of “measures not men”! — the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No, Sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.’ George Canning said this in 1801 and recent events remind us that he was right. In the end the only way to change the policy is to change the person, as the individual determines the direction and is rarely willing to try a different route. As I have known this quotation for decades, it was naïve of me to expect the Prime Minister to change her policy. It is not how it works: the wrong policy means the wrong person.

As I had previously been vocal in my support for the Prime Minister, I thought once I had changed my mind I ought to make it public. Needless to say, I then ran into Theresa May in the division lobby, something that almost never happens. Fortunately, on what could have been a socially awkward occasion, the subject of Geoffrey Boycott came to mind. As a child, he was my cricketing hero and I could then have reeled off his statistics like a putative Bill Frindall. I even knew, but have now had to look up, that in 1979 he not only averaged over 100 for his batting but under ten for his bowling. In that amazing season in the County Championship he took nine wickets for 84 runs, and had he taken one more wicket would have topped both the batting and bowling averages.