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Sometimes, on slow days, I picture Sir Keir Starmer and our Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, doing the can-can while sticking their fingers in their ears and singing ‘la la la I can’t hear you’, to a backdrop of mounting concerns about VAT on school fees. It recently emerged that Tony Blair (for it is he) was firmly against it back in the 1990s, on the sound basis that taxing parents for sending their children to school is a bit stupid. But Starmer is no Blair, more’s the pity. It is abundantly clear, now, that this is an education tax, pure and simple, and that it has some decidedly problematic consequences,

My first Negroni was in a bar called Turandot, in a piazza in Lucca, Tuscany. It was the summer of 1996, and I noticed the waiter bringing out an intriguing-looking red liquid, served in a rocks glass over a large ice cube, and garnished with an orange slice. I had agreed to split a bottle of prosecco with my three holiday companions, despite hating the stuff. But it was a warm, lazy evening, the fizz was nice and cold, and a drink is a drink, after all. I asked the waiter to bring me whatever it was he was serving the other customers, and soon I was taking my first