Enough is enough

The recent Tory Party Conference was genuinely a watershed. As Ian Hislop has said, the first few days sounded like the UKIP Conference and then we had one day of the Labour Conference in which the PM made lots of smooth-sounding platitudes about bringing people together, governing for all and making a success of Brexit.

She has become rather good at such noises ... but ruined the effect the following day by allowing Sajid Javid to announce that fracking is to go ahead in Lancashire in defiance of the wishes of the local community and in favour of big business (sorry, 'our national energy policy'). I am sure that the people of Lancashire will have enjoyed the exercise of 'democracy'.

It was possible to feel deeply insulted by the response that it was not for Parliament to double-think the will of the British people, presumably because that was reserved for the ruling clique who have interpreted the June vote to suit their own purposes. One commentator even tried to justify the government's strategy on the basis of 'polling' which makes one wonder why we bother to have elections at all.

Just as we were reeling from Liam Fox' suggestion that existing EU nationals were mere cards to be played in our negotiation with the EU we heard from our Home Secretary which was surely the nadir of the Conference. (Not forgetting that our control-freak PM's former job - record definitely doubtful - was Home Secretary and this is a policy area in which she would have a special  interest)

Amber Rudd's speech said that companies would need to record the nationality of all staff and name and shame those that were employing foreigners. This was particularly appalling as it came from a minister in a cabinet that prides itself on its micro-management of news (with the exception of statements by the three blind mice/wise monkeys who seem to be a law unto themselves and frequently contradict each other).

Her speech was the moment that I said 'I can no longer stand by. I must act.'

A clarification assured us that Rudd had not meant what she had said at all and that there was no question of naming and shaming it was just that government was going to collect the statistics so that it could work out where there were 'skill shortages'. Back-tracking under pressure, and so quickly.

As an aside, can someone explain to me how the system is going to work? Data would be submitted by firms. This will no doubt say 'this database manager job is occupied by a person born in Czechia' ...which will feed through to the Education Department who will train up a new database manager so that, in 20 years, we will have a person available who can fill that job. This is the apparent thinking behind Jeremy Hunt's delight in announcing that 1500 extra doctors are to be trained each year (and about time too).

Or will it feed through to Employment Offices who will be required to trawl through their records to find someone who claims to be a database manager so that they can be posted to the firm concerned who can then 'let go' of the Czech national?

And, if so, then how many civil servants will it take to administer such a scheme? And at what cost?

And will the number of vacancies - less the number of existing Brits who claim to be able to do the job - be passed to our Consulates so that they can 'let in' suitable people who can then apply for the jobs?

And what happens if the Brits concerned turn out to be wholly unsuitable for the jobs concerned? What of the government's productivity drive then?

Then there was the message to the LSE that the government would not permit anyone with a foreign passport to provide advice to government on matters to do with Brexit, ostensibly for fear that 'our negotiating position - (do we read 'lack of any coherent plan'?) should leak. This was so swiftly and strenuously denied as to be deeply suspicious.

I can no longer stand by at such centralist fascist bullying, such xeno-racist talk. All it requires for evil to prosper is for good people to do nothing. Just as Donald Trump's vile remarks show the true character of the man - not something that can be dismissed as locker-room chat - so last week's announcements show the true character of this government.

Let me state my position clearly: this government must go, starting at the top.

In 1997 we were a nation that was at ease with itself. Not now. Not when half the country is regarded as deluded for their views. Not when the government of the day behaves like the worst sort of bully - 'you lost get over it' - aided and abetted by most of the mainstream media (owned by rich tycoons who stand to benefit most from Brexit). Not when the government of the day does nothing - not a single thing - to win us over to their vision of the future: not an explanation, not a reasoned argument, not an invitation to engage: just platitudes and 'it will be alright on the night'.

Some of us wish the UK to continue as an Open, tolerant and united country and yes, those words may be familiar but they should apply to all political parties in the great tradition of UK.Why, they are probably enshrined in the 'British Values' which the government is so keen that all schoolchildren should learn about.

Parliament managed to find time to discuss - but not vote on - the plan for Brexit this week. Of course a vote could not happen: the government might have lost it. Was this the re-capturing sovereignty for our own parliament that was promised?

I do not normally post things verbatim on this site but every now and again something appears which hits the nail on the head. What follows is a letter from someone about whom I know nothing but who clearly feels the same as many of us:

Dear Prime Minister

I was a Remain voter.

When you became Prime Minister I was cautiously hopeful because I felt you would be a voice of reason and moderation in a country where these qualities seemed to be being cast aside. Even when you appointed Messrs Fox, Davis, and Johnson to government, I felt perhaps that this was an intelligent move to give the responsibility for execution to those who had so carelessly made lavish and unfulfillable promises.

However, the Conservative Party Conference has disabused me of this hope.

Although I am now in my sixties, I have never known the country so divided as it has been since 23rd June. 

The Conference would have been an opportunity for a real leader to reach out to try to start to heal some of the wounds. Instead, you decided to use your speech to disparage the 16 million voters who felt it would be a huge mistake for this country to leave the EU.

Thanks to your speech I learn that I am, in your eyes, part of a “sneering, metropolitan elite” because I struggle to understand why a slim majority of my fellow citizens voted to go down the disastrous route of leaving the EU.

It is certainly true that I have sneered at the manifest dishonesty of senior politicians (some now in your cabinet) who misled the electorate by telling lies so crass, so grotesque, that they had to be withdrawn a day or two after the referendum.

However, I do not sneer and never have sneered at the concerns of the poorest and most disadvantaged in our society – I myself grew up in that sort of background. I believe they have very real causes for concern which have been ignored for far too long. The irony of this is that you have been a senior member of governments which, for the last six years, have been doing the ignoring, so trying to place the blame on those who voted Remain is a cynical misdirection of responsibility.

Truly, if you want to see real sneering, you have only to glance at the Daily Express or visit a Brexit website.

That apart, I am angry.

I am angry at MPs who seem to think that it is perfectly acceptable to make the most significant decision of a generation on the basis of these lies, and who lack the moral courage of their own convictions.

I am angry at a government which, after a narrow margin in favour of detaching from the EU (with a significantly disenfranchised electorate and where “Leave” voters were motivated by a wide range of considerations) now seeks to convert this advisory vote (for thus it was) into a mandate to lurch to the extreme right and to turn on those of foreign birth who have made their lives in this country.

I am angry at a government which, pursing a policy supposedly in the name of “taking back sovereignty”, now believes that it alone has the right to decide on the future of the country without reference to our elected parliament.

I am angry at a government which appears intent on a “hard Brexit” which will condemn us to a further decade or more of recession which will hit hardest the poorest and most needy in our society, will severely diminish our place in the world, and which may well fragment the United Kingdom itself.

I am angry at a government which fails to invest in housing, education, health, and other infrastructure and then cynically encourages the blame to be passed on to immigrants when services cannot cope.

I bow to no-one in my pride at being British, but patriotism is not the same as a narrow, xenophobic nationalism. I believe that our future lies in close co-operation with other European Democracies, rather than with regimes like China, or in gloriously futile isolationism. In truth, right now I am feeling ashamed of my country.

I do not normally spend a huge amount of time engaged with politics. I have only once written to a Prime Minister before: to Tony Blair on the eve of the Iraq War. However, it appears that you now think of me as your enemy, along with the sixteen million others who voted Remain and who are, for the most part, still deeply concerned about the direction in which our country is heading. So be it.

A few years ago, you yourself said of the Conservatives: “They call us the Nasty Party”. Well, after your party’s Conference, people are now calling you the Nazi Party. There’s a legacy to be proud of, Prime Minister! 

Yours sincerely 

Martyn Calder

The job I am used to

Have you noticed how someone who is promoted internally seems to enjoy doing the same job they had before? There is a natural comfort in knowing the topic.

It is akin to what follows the familiar line If I were in charge we would ... which usually results in a rather narrowly-focused solution largely based on the person's current job rather than one which takes other factors into account.

Our new PM is certainly following this trend with her interpretation of the referendum result as being all about migration (which she failed to control in her previous job) and squeezing the European Court of Justice (with whom she crossed swords in her last job) out of our affairs.

It is sad that the economy will need to be sent down the pan to overcome her previous failings.

Democracy in action?

With Theresa May firing the starting pistol on Brexit over the weekend, the world is coincidentally full of referenda (referendums?).

Hungary has just voted in a referendum to prevent the EU from telling it how many migrants it should take. A turnout of 50% was required but the vote only achieved 43%; however 98% of those supported the government's stance. Naturally, the Hungarian PM claimed it as a victory with a spokesman calling it 'binding politically and legally'. Hmm ...

We could learn from the Hungarians on phrasing a question. Do you want the European Union to be able to mandate the obligatory resettlement of non-Hungarian citizens into Hungary even without the approval of the National Assembly. In its English translation, the question probably requires the reading age of an intelligent eighteen year old but really only invites one answer: the one it received.

Hungary had only been asked to take 1,294 migrants: about 0.1% of its existing population and the equivalent of the UK taking about 8,000. They went to the expense of a referendum for that? The cost of the vote must have well exceeded the cost of housing the refugees.

Meanwhile, in Colombia, a country that has been ravaged by drug wars for over 50 years, they held a referendum on the FARC peace deal which was rejected by a tiny fraction over 50% of the population, even more finely balanced than the Brexit result. The opponents wanted heads on plates, not reconciliation.

As to our Brexit one, with its simplistic question and 'advisory' result, everyone has been interpreting the result as 'meaning' whatever they wanted it to mean. We are now told that it was not about a hatred of Westminster/banker's bonuses/austerity/human rights/taking back control/fishing quotas ... but it was about migration, pure and simple. Apparently the voters have given their verdict with 'emphatic clarity' (TM).

But there are parliamentary rumblings ... as former Tory minister Stephen Dorrell succinctly put it: focussing negotiations that were about economic policy on immigration would be an 'odd' move ... To pursue a pure objective on immigration - that way lies madness.

Referenda may be the latest tool of 'democracy' but they are blunt and silly ways to make coherent, joined up policy. Just ask the Swiss.

Another week, another Turkey

The turkeys continue to vote for Christmas although we now seem to have different and very conflicting recipes on how to to cook our bird.

Over the weekend various groups who were worried about the slow progress (if any) with Brexit started to cohere demanding the idea of going for a 'Hard Brexit'. This, as far as anyone can define is to say 'let's forget about the single market and simply go it alone in the world'. I make this the microwave recipe for it assumes we simply send in the Article 50 letter as soon as possible, put two fingers to our former friends and get on with it: fast.

The fact that this group included great striding minds like John Redwood and Jacob Rees-Mogg should surely tell us all we need to know about its credibility.

If David Cameron's original intention in calling the referendum was to sort out disagreements within the Tory party then it is clear that it has not yet succeeded. There seems to be no consensus on whether we need/want/will get access to the European single market.

• On Monday we heard that Senior Tories had 'warned against hard Brexit' despite people like Boris backing the idea 
• On Tuesday Michael Howard took a typically tough line and argued for a hard break while showing his lack of understanding of existing trade relationships - and this from a former party leader
• On Thursday, Liam Fox seemed to want to have his cake and eat it. In a speech as full of optimistic visioning and as devoid of detail or rational facts as David Davis', he hinted at a hard Brexit and suggesting that we would have access to the single market with little problem. The old adage of 'they need us more than we need them ...' which stands up to about 30 seconds worth of analysis. Nick Clegg was on hand to point out the fallacy. It is so good to have a Trade Minister who really understands his brief

Also on Thursday, the big beast Ken Clarke appeared to be 'agreeing with Nick' when he said that the PM was running a government with no policies and had not a clue what she was doing with Brexit. He went on to say he was not going to change the conviction of lifetime and vote in favour of Brexit despite the referendum result. It is good to see someone saying it at last.

Liam Fox later waved away the warning from Nissan bosses that they would stop investing in their highly successful plant in Sunderland if tariffs made them uncompetitive. What an irony that it was Sunderland that was the first to declare their vote in the referendum and the poor people of that city look like being the first turkeys to discover the meaning of Christmas.

It is worth reading the full article in the Independent in which the author, James Moore, leaves us in no doubt about his view of Liam Fox or Brexit.

• [New models will] almost certainly be built in countries that haven't chosen to shoot themselves in their economic foot
• ... but Brexiteers like the odious Liam Fox, Secretary of State for International Trade ... 
• [And when the jobs go in Sunderland] ... you wonder whether Mr Fox has given any thought to what he might replace them with? More call centres?
• Will Mr Fox, a wealthy man who will be all but immune from the economic fallout of Brexit, be welcomed if he visits the affected areas after this has happened? Probably not a question worth asking. I doubt he'll have the guts.  

No doubt he, like the Express (whose link with reality was lost long ago) believe that 'we will be fine' because the economy is doing well just now.

It took a wonderful piece in Private Eye to nail the truth in a few well-chosen words:  To put it in more technical term, the shit hasn't hit the fan yet, as Theresa May tries to delay turning the fan on for as long as possible.

Turkey itself was in the news with Boris once again flip-flopping his views on the benefits of their joining the EU.

• Two years ago, in a television documentary he sat on the banks of the Bosphorus and underlined the cultural importance of Turkey joining the EU
• In May/June this year, he backed the Brexit campaign and stressed the danger of 70m Turks (overtones of 'Muslims', terrorists, Syrian refugees ...) flooding into the EU and thus into the UK (despite everyone pointing out that Turkey had a very long way to go on the process and the UK would have a veto on them joining anyway) 
• Now he wants to be very helpful in assisting Turkey to join

It must be such good news for Turkey to have the support of such a reliable partner, even if we are about to leave the very thing they are about to join. I wonder what help the UK - the least credible member of the EU - could possibly give.

Somewhere during this week, there was a Labour Party Conference but other than re-crowning Saint Jeremy, it had little connection with the reality we face and barely mentioned Brexit.

Next week we have the Tory Party conference at which we expect to hear much about domestic matters and probably very little detail from the PM about Brexit. After all, she would not want to give us a running commentary, would she?

'Dead cats' - like the proposals for grammar schools - will be thrown in our paths to distract us from asking difficult questions about her least favourite topic.

Having had a French and a German minister trying to explain the four freedoms - and the link between access to the single market and freedom of movement - to the UK in words of one syllable, rumours abound that it just may end up as a mess.

The last word of the week must go to that Euro-hero Guy Verhofstadt (who we last met being dropped from Nigel Farage's Christmas card list). Here is his 'Christmas' message to the world:

So Boris Johnson wants to help Turkey join the EU, after he just campaigned for the UK to leave the EU on the basis that Turkey would be joining the EU in the near future.

The UK Defence Minister today says the UK Government will block EU efforts to enhance its security capabilities, even though the UK is leaving the EU, yet they say they want and enhanced security relationship with the EU after Brexit.

Liam Fox, the UK Trade Minister, has indicated the UK will leave the EU's customs union, because he thinks other markets are more important, yet his Prime Minister tells us that the EU27 'will sign' an ambitious trade deal with the UK.

It is good to know that the man with whom we will be negotiating has such a high regard for our ministers.

'They haven't a clue'

Now available. Instructions are not provided

Things do not seem to be getting any clearer on where we are supposedly heading. We left the story last week with our gallant PM in New York telling others that migration was the big issue and that she had the answer. It looked mighty like Donald Trump's wall only it was full of water and labelled 'The English Channel'.

In the margins of the same event, President Obama reminded us of the pictures of bodies being washed up in the Mediterranean and invited us to show some humanity.

Donald Tusk helpfully pointed out that a large referendum result was a systemic failure by British politicians who had managed to blame Europe for their own failings over the years. This did not go down well with the government - nothing Tusk says ever will, especially if it is close to the truth.

Other European leaders and their ministers joined in and reminded us that we could not have access to the single market and avoid free movement of people. Boris Johnson naturally regarded this as complete baloney.

At a joint news conference the French Foreign Minister and Germany's Wolfgang Schaeuble responded:
If we need to do more, we will gladly send her majesty's foreign minister a copy of the Lisbon Treaty [Kind of them not to mention that this was willingly signed by HMG]. Then he can read that there is a certain link between the single market and the four core principles in Europe.

I can also say it in English. So if clarification is necessary we can pay a visit and explain this to him in good English.

The French foreign minister added:
There are four freedoms and they cannot be separated. So if we want to make good European pate then there are four freedoms that together make up the pate in question.
Ouch! Who says the Germans do not have a sense of humour?

An unnamed diplomat told the Financial Times that there are six Boris Johnsons. Boris is generally perceived as a bad joke so everybody waits to see that face he will put on this time: clown, liar, joker, manipulator, master of insult or serious responsible politician. Expectations form him are very low based on his track record so far.

We were once again reminded that there would be no running commentary on progress with Brexit. This left commentators to wonder again exactly what it meant.

Some clarity did begin to emerge as discussions are at last beginning to focus on the two key issues: trade and migration. Talk of 'taking back control', of reducing bureaucracy, of funding the NHS and other mysterious Brexit promises have faded from the scene and we are faced with a straight and simple dilemma.

But, since there is no running commentary, nor updates, we are all in the dark as to which is seen as the lesser of the two evils. Are we surprised that businessmen are eyeing Liam Fox's golf course?

It was a harsh week. On Monday, Nick Clegg pointed out that the government had not a clue - and although critics dismissed him as an unreliable has-been, he knows the main actors well and characterised the Tory mindset well. His briefing paper on the complexity of arriving an WTO trade agreement was a brilliant piece of work which showed just how complex and overlapping the process would be.

Monday was also the day that Nicola Horlick defected to the Lib Dems, taking a side swipe at Liam Fox on the way, claiming that his comments on businessmen confirmed that the Tories' reputation for economic competence was now in tatters. She also reminded people of the warning by the Japanese that it would make eminent sense for them to move investment if we left the EU.

The Lib Dems were in the news again on Tuesday when Tim Farron made his conference speech committing to an open, tolerant and united country, preferably in the EU, and actually got coverage on the mainstream media even if he was upstaged by a celebrity marriage break-up.

By Wednesday, we learned that the areas that had backed Brexit were those that had been historically starved of government support. A later and rather longer report tracked the rise of the far right in both the UK and USA and showed that it was about lack of empowerment and resentment at 'new' people which easily translated into a hatred of immigration.

Tory Alan Duncan then spiced things up by saying openly that Boris Johnson had not expected to win the referendum but was only interested in being seen as the PM heir-apparent. I guess they had a meaningful discussion in the Parliament bar afterwards.

The publication of the first of the memoirs to hit the bookshops confirmed many of the things we had expected, to the effect that Boris had been wavering until the last moment and had only sent the then PM a text nine minutes announcing that he would be running for Brexit.

In an effort to cheer us up, the Mail reassured us that the results of Project Fear had yet to emerge. Um ... have they not noticed that the pound has fallen through the floor and that we have not yet left the EU.

By Friday the topic of Hard Brexit was being mentioned and George Osborne who is clearly going to enjoy being a distraction to the government, pointed out the question paper had not said anything about Hard Brexit.

Actually, the question paper had not mentioned anything other than a straight in/out question and so it is only spin and interpretation of the polls that allows any of us to work out what the referendum answer actually was other than a vote for out (just, almost ...)

Left alone to mind the shop, Boris could not resist telling someone that Article 50 would be triggered in the early part of 2017. Even though this was a repeat of what the PM had already said, he was also slapped down, making it a trio of public hand-slaps for the three wise monkeys in as many weeks.

Oh, and Northern Ireland started looking into mounting a legal challenge against Brexit.

The weekend continued in like vein and by Monday we were being told that British diplomats were (understandably) telling European businessmen not to believe a thing coming out of the three Brexit ministers. Presumably they have worked out that the PM holds the reins and has no confidence in her three primates.

At the end of a depressingly directionless week when sense has once again been hard to find, there is this witty customer complaint to enjoy.

The madness continues ...

The Last Night of the Proms was an occasion when the competing sides in the Brexit debate sought to hijack things to suit their different agendas. Remainers planned a mass-waving of EU flags but were stymied by the Brexiteers who tried to swamp these with UK flags. As it was, the result was the usual collection of flags of many nations.

The NewsThump satirical website reminded us all that waving the flag was tantamount to treason and outlined the punishment likely to be meted out to perpetrators.

This did not stop the social media trolls. One charming posting gave a satisfying reminder of the importance of proof-reading.

On Monday, the Sun ran a piece suggesting that the EU would charge UK citizens for visas to visit Europe. This, the Sun suggested, was a piece of spite by the EU.

... charging ordinary Brits to visit the Continent when countries such as Germany and France have had wide-open borders for decades is simply absurd. 

It is no surprise spiteful Brussels wants to punish us for Brexit.

How does one even begin to argue with this sort of logic? Germany and France have open borders because they are both in the EU and because their (democratically elected) governments have agreed not to have visas. Oh bother! I have used some long words. Let me start again ...

Poor Justine Greening then announced what we had been told last week: that grammar schools were back on the agenda.

Two extra points emerged: that the cap on the proportion of children of specific faiths admitted to 'faith' schools was to be lifted from 50%. It is hard to see how this proposal goes any way towards broadening the social mix in such schools, nor why the government sees fit to include it. Where is the political pressure for this coming from?

The second observation was that the Green Paper on grammar schools cuts right across the proposals in the awaited White Paper on academies, demonstrating how incoherent the government 'strategy' for education actually is.  

Elsewhere, David Davis told us again that there would be no second referendum and that parliament would not be given a say on any part of the Brexit process, not at the beginning, not during, nor when it was completed. It did not take people long to recognise that the Brexit manifesto objective of 'taking back sovereignty to the UK parliament' was to be another broken promise.

By 'UK Parliament' it did not mean the 'UK Parliament' but a closed-shop of utterly reliable Ministers, working in deadly secrecy to avoid 'our negotiating position' to leak out.

On Wednesday we had an announcement of the proposed parliamentary constituency boundary changes which, surprise, surprise, lead to a predicted increase in the number of Tory seats by 40. Gerrymandering was coined to describe just such adjustments.

Fun stuff this democracy. It is just as well that the Human Rights Act is to be replaced by ... oh yes, Liz Truss has not worked out what with (or why), has she ...

As the week got into its stride, we were told that the Hinckley Point deal had been agreed. So we have 'taken back control' to hand it over to the French and Chinese governments.

Much as I love China and its people as a country, it is hard to think of a major regime whose human rights record is dire as that of China except, perhaps Saudi Arabia and we would not want to do business with them would we ... Oh, you mean all those arms sales? Well, those are different because ... Brexit is taking us in some dubiously moral directions.

And less we should sound a little sanctimonious, the parliamentary report on Libya laid the responsibility for the chaos in that country on the personal lap of David Cameron. He caused the political chaos, it said, and he is responsible for the wave of refugees crossing the Mediterranean and ... yes, landing up on the doorsteps of Italy, France and the UK.

Talk about kicking a man when he is down. Did foreknowledge of this report encourage him to resign to avoid being a distraction to the PM: to avoid sitting on the backbenches sulking as Ted Heath did after being ousted?

Tellingly, the report said that Cameron had started the bombing campaign without a clear strategy for the aftermath. So both the Chilcott report and this one have said the same thing. Will we make the same mistake with Brexit?

From vacuum to golf course

David Davis' speech summarised by the
Have I Got News for You Facebook page

Last week was not the new government's greatest week.

On Monday, Brexit Minister David Davis opened the batting with a statement to Parliament about 'progress' with his work which said absolutely nothing that we did not already know: that there was no plan and no clear direction. Out for a duck?

The PM, fresh from her tough time being left out at the G20 discussions and no doubt reeling from Japan's dire and unusually direct warnings about investment, confirmed that she did not feel committed to the Brexit commitments on Immigration or the NHS which were two of the main planks for the Manifesto of Lies. She has already rejected the Australian points-based system for immigration. (It is strange how newly promoted people prefer to carry on doing their old job, undermining the newly-appointed replacements.)

On Tuesday, a cameraman's long lens spotted a document about the expansion of grammar schools, a policy which had been resisted by the Cameron regime. Caught at slip off a thick edge?

By Wednesday, No 10 was publicly slapping Davis down - sorry, saying that 'he was expressing a personal opinion' - for some of his remarks while the PM confirmed that grammar schools were back on the agenda. The timing was interesting as it took the focus off Brexit.

The education industry and others predictably weighed in with thousands of reasons why grammar schools were the wrong answer and this guaranteed that the weekend news agenda would be about education and not about Davis' incompetence.

Wednesday was also the day when new Minister Liz Truss appeared before the House of Commons Justice Committee to announce ... and showed that she has not yet got her head around her agenda or brief.  Prison Reform is now dead in the water. So that is Grayling, Gove and now Truss, all with different ideas and we are no further forward.

On Thursday, Donald Tusk appeared to have breakfast at No 10 and to press for an early lodging of Article 50, saying the ball was in the UK's court. This gave the headline writers a field day ranging from reference to 'balls' to questioning whether Breakfast meant Breakfast.

Friday resulted in a couple of quick wickets. The PM did her 'big speech' about the sort of society she wanted to create which included her commitment to grammar schools. Was this a late, and rather over-specific, insertion following the leak?

Liam Fox then surrendered his wicket very cheaply by saying that Britain is 'too lazy and too fat' with businessmen (sic) preferring 'golf on a Friday afternoon' to trying to boost the country's prosperity.

The balloon went up with respected notable entrepreneurs like Richard Reed of Innocent Drinks saying 'He is a representative of us, of this country, and he turns round and slags us off, calling us fat and lazy. He's talking about business people who were absolutely clear in saying that we want to export - and that's why we do want to remain in the EU... 

'How dare he talk down the country that he damaged, how dare he? He's a terrible, terrible voice for British business.'

Even the normally supportive Telegraph was moved to hint that businessmen might be playing rounds of golf while they waited to see what wonderful new trading arrangements Mr Fox had arranged.

So that was pretty much all out for nil. Mind you, with the Labour Party engaged in its self-destructive election, the bowling was hardly threatening.