On our shoulders

Our politics is such a shallow game that any senior British politician who has read a book is apt to be considered cerebral, and if he has read two, feted as an original thinker. So I had never quite dispelled the suspicion that the nickname ‘Two-Brains’ might have been awarded to David Willetts for no better reason than that he knew his stuff, could talk like an academic, had a lively sense of the complexities of things, and sounded a little vague.