Politics

How is Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit position landing with his constituents? On Tuesday, Labour’s National Executive Committee came under pressure to change policy to campaign for a second referendum. However, they instead agreed to stick with the current Brexit fudge of keeping a second referendum merely on the table as an option if other plans failed. It’s a decision that won’t please everyone in Corbyn’s pro-EU Islington constituency. A friend of Mr S noticed something rather interesting while on their run this week. Someone had redecorated the front door and windows of Corbyn’s constituency office with some bright yellow posters: Emblazoned with some colourful slogans including “Jez needs to grow a

Can the past hold the present to ransom? Can we be culpable for our predecessors’ actions? Knotty questions of this kind have long been debated in British universities. But now these abstractions are finding new and controversial expression. Yesterday, the University of Cambridge made headlines by launching an academic investigation into its historical relationship – direct or otherwise – with the slave trade. The panel will spend two years scrutinising whether Cambridge profited from ‘the Atlantic slave trade and other forms of coerced labour during the colonial era’. For academics, the enquiry will certainly be interesting. But serious problems inevitably arise when historical discoveries are deemed to have moral consequence for the present.

Liz Truss and Diane Abbott are an unlikely pair. One is a champion of free markets while the other is a true Corbynista. However, of late the Chief Treasury to the Secretary has managed to find common cause with the shadow home secretary. Speaking at a Freer think tank event last night with fellow freedom lovers James Cleverly and Steve Baker in the audience, Truss spoke of the importance of fighting over-interference of the state into people’s daily lives – and that includes Abbott’s recent decision to disobey London transport rules and drink an M&S mojito on the overground: ‘When we try to micromanage people’s lives, we take away the