In the hours leading up to Monday’s vote in the Commons on the EU referendum motion, frantic negotiations took place between No. 10 and Nick Clegg’s office. Downing Street wanted the Liberal Democrat leader to stay away from both David Cameron’s statement on the European Council and William Hague’s speech in the debate. It feared
What is the appropriate sort of language, do you suppose, for the captain of the England football team to use in respect of his colleagues? This is an important issue and I, for one, will not sleep until a sort of resolution — a closure, if you will — has been arrived at. Because we
Do you remember that classic 1980s American TV series about a group of elderly American women, The Golden Girls? You could call the sitcom the geriatric equivalent of Friends: equally sharp, and every bit as addictive. One of the central characters (she was called Rose) was forever lapsing into interminable accounts of uninteresting events. Her
‘Great God, Twitter is an awful place!’ I tweeted the other day. Hypocritically. After all, if I really hate it so much, what the hell am I still doing there? It’s quite possible for someone in my game to survive without Twitter. Look at Rod Liddle. The reason Rod doesn’t do Twitter is that he
When, roughly 60 years ago, Aneurin Bevan described the Conservatives as ‘lower than vermin’, Tory supporters all over the country formed a Vermin Club in proud response. Now it is time to form a Graffiti Club. On the Today programme on Monday, the day of the referendum vote in Parliament, William Hague foolishly compared his
Deep in autumnal France, it’s eerily quiet except for a flock of magpies in the trees — an omen of ‘death and hard times ahead’, or so I read on a website for druids which is as informative as any of the more mainstream sources about the chances of successful resolution of the euro crisis.
