Eastern uprising

The spirit of Hereward the Wake is stalking the Fens again. It is very tempting to characterise Elizabeth Truss’ opponents, nicknamed the ‘Turnip Taliban’, as a collection of Rigsbys thwarted in their ambition to find the permissive society on the one hand, and plain reactionaries on the other. Not least because Melissa Kite reveals in today’s Telegraph that the TT’s self-appointed Chief-Mullah, Sir Jeremy Bagge, who has taken to traversing his estates in a Pashtun turban to mark his celebrity, venerates women in the following terms: “I have absolutely nothing against women. Who cooks my lunch? Who cooks my dinner?…Women, you can’t do without them?” One might almost think that men were their equals.

But to give the Turnip Taliban their due, sources at CCHQ admit that they have handled this and other recent selection processes inadequately, and have inspired antipathy among activists in consequence.