Rosé-tinted glasses

It was a typical bank holiday. Usual English weather: glorious, until you leave home without a brolly. Then fickleness supervenes — just like the opinion polls. I was pressed by anxious enquiries. ‘You’re supposed to know about these things. There’s no chance of Corbyn winning, surely?’ On the assumption that enough of the sovereign people are still in their right wits, I was able to sound reassuring. But as I did so, a memory came back: Quintin Hogg in 1964, proclaiming that anyone who voted Labour was stark, staring bonkers. These days, that would be called a gaffe. The once and future Lord Hailsham was famous for gaffes. As he would now be called a national treasure, it is unlikely that any harm was done. But Harold Wilson still won.

Jeremy Corbyn is not Harold Wilson. Although a wholly meretricious figure, Wilson was able to persuade large numbers of people that he was just about the cleverest man in England. Mr Corbyn is not meretricious. Nor is he the cleverest man in England.

By then, the skies had darkened. Fickleness was turning to thunder. ‘The heavens themselves proclaim the death of governments.’ Let us hope not.

Wine is an admirable cure for anxiety, so we set about a bottle or two. If the worst comes to the worst, as a Russian grand duke once said, between the revolution and the firing squad, there is always time for a bottle of champagne. We started with a lesser source of comfort. Some of us are on a wine committee and it was necessary to taste some rosés.

I am not the ideal assessor of rosés. They work well if the temperature is in the 80s, preferably south of Lyon, with an idle day in prospect.