Let the wine do the talking

We had all said everything there was to say about Brexit a hundred times over. So the conversation took different routes. We discussed D-Day, Philip Hammond, clichés and President Trump. D-Day: what an awesome concentration of men and materiel — what a magnificent expression of military, national and moral resolve. A youngster made the sort of point beloved of smartass youngsters down the ages. What about the Eastern Front; what about the Kursk salient? Should all that not put D-Day in a diminished perspective?

No, he was told, for two reasons. Without D-Day, the Soviet empire would have extended a lot further west, reaching the Rhine if not indeed the Channel. Equally, with some exceptions, especially when the Waffen SS were in action, the war in the west was as civilised as war can be. In the east, the earth and its inhabitants were ravaged by hell-driven barbarism.

Another question arose. Moral resolve: these days, could we as a nation ever mount an operation similar to D-Day? Let us hope that we never have to find out. Morals led us on to Philip Hammond. General agreement broke out among a group who are normally allergic to agreement, that there is no more honourable man in the front-rank of public life. In an era of illusion and fantasy, he is a tough-minded realist. Yet there would be no point in his running for the Tory leadership, a contest which Boris Johnson might win. This is not to the Tory party’s credit.

‘Philip’s not much of a politician,’ someone observed. ‘No,’ said I: ‘he has the defects of his qualities.’ That was immediately hailed as a brilliant remark. I swiftly rebuffed the compliments. A few decades ago, I had to delve into the minor political literature of the 1890s.