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Aveek Bhattacharya argues that Andy Burnham is Labour's Boris Johnson: "The two men share a tendency to be led by instinct over doctrine, a talent for building coalitions, and a rare capacity to resonate emotionally with an audience. They also share a common vulnerability: a reluctance to bring their own side bad news. Both are men for the big picture rather than nitty-gritty details, happiest channeling grievance and hope into a broad political story."

A disproportionate number of children and young people growing up in care in Scotland are dying prematurely, Yet, despite Scottish government policy, almost two-thirds of such deaths over the last five years have not been reviewed, reports Karin Goodwin.

"If I can get 15 minutes with parents and policymakers, the argument becomes much more nuanced. Parents actually breathe a sigh of relief. They can make all the decisions they want to about how tech-free or tech-full they want to be, based on their values and what they want for their family – but they don’t have to make it with this threat that it's going to lead to horrible outcomes for their children." Amelia Gentleman interviews the psychologist Candice Odgers, who is a sceptic on social media bans for teenagers.

Alan Lester looks at the politics behind arguments about the teaching of the history of the British Empire in schools. 

Ferdinand Mount writes about M.R. James, ghosts and sex.

"As the narrator lies on the doctor’s couch, revealing her thoughts in a candid, unguarded manner, a harrowing picture begins to emerge. We learn how every aspect of her life has been dictated by men, from her upbringing to her choices of husbands and the nature of their marriages to the control of her physical and mental health." JacquiWine says Penelope Mortimer's The Pumpkin Easter is the best novel she has read this year.

Russian submarine found in Lake Windermere

This land sits right next to the Furness railway line - a vital transport link to both BAE Submarines in Barrow and Sellafield nuclear power station. That’s why I made representations to ministers asking whether this sale would be compliant with the UK’s sanctions against Russia.

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— Tim Farron (@timfarron.bsky.social) 24 April 2026 at 15:37

A story peeks out at me from behind the Financial Times paywall:

Russian businessman and his daughter have triggered national security concerns by seeking to buy a golf course located next to the railway that serves the UK’s main shipyard for nuclear-powered attack submarines.

As Tim Farron points out, the line also serves the nuclear site at Sellafield. You may not be surprised to hear that the deal collapsed this week after government intervention and enquiries from the FT.

My first thought on reading this was of the old joke in Whoops Apocalypse about a Soviet submarine being found in Staines reservoir.

But nothing should surprise us in a country where we have a Lord Siberia sitting in the upper house of our parliament.

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Peter Jukes says Boris Johnson and Alexander Lebedev must be investigated in a new public inquiry into Russian influence

"If you are young or have a young family, should you vote for millionaire Nigel Farage? For me, he is likely to directly impoverish and disenfranchise the young – Reform UK policies are already shaping up in this way. Where will it end?" Mark Cunliffe itemises Reform's attack on the young.

"This punishment represents the state’s most severe power to harm its citizens. Understanding how and why it is used tells us about our appetite for punishment and the state’s power to inflict it. And evidence suggests that its use is rising." Jake Phillips and Hannah Gilman discuss why the number of whole-life sentences is increasing in England and Wales.

Charlotte Williams investigates how archaeology helped the US colonise the Panama Canal Zone – just as the current US government threatens to retake it.

Alex Harvey revisits Lindsay Anderson’s If.... 50 years after its release: "Anderson was a classic child of the British imperial class. His father, a Scot and a soldier, was born in Northern India, his mother, a formidable memsahib, in Queenstown, South Africa, and Anderson himself in Bangalore. He was raised to replicate his father’s social class and profession."

"The family of the ITV Sport presenter Mark Pougatch were all wearing lederhosen." Thomas Weber attends the World Conker Championships at Southwick in Northamptonshire.

Downing Street Downfalls: The Misadventures of Britain’s Prime Minister Since Thatcher by Mark Garnett

Downing Street Downfalls: The Misadventures of Britain’s Prime Minister Since Thatcher

Mark Garnett

Agenda, 2025, £20

It’s not a novelty for British prime ministers to leave No. 10 without having lost an election: Churchill, Eden, Macmillan and Wilson all did so. What is new, says Mark Garnett, is for them to be bundled out of power when they are still in good health.

He dates this trend to the fall of Thatcher in 1990, and it’s tempting to put its acceleration in the years since then down to Brexit. As Garnett says:

The 2016 referendum, and its consequences, accounted directly for Cameron and May; and while Johnson and Truss found means of self-sabotage, arguably neither would have earned the chance to showcase their ineptitude for leadership without Brexit.

But he sees other forces at work. The social upheavals of the Sixties led to a decline in class consciousness and in strong identification with a particular party among voters. In this new world, the popularity and perceived strengths of party leaders became increasingly important, as seen from the fact that Margaret Thatcher is the last party leader to have won an election while being less popular than her main opponent. 

This trend has encouraged a presidential style among prime ministers – a style that the public and press seem to have come to expect. When John Major tried to undo some of the changes of Thatcher’s Boadicea years and restore the importance of the cabinet, it was widely seen as a sign of weakness.

It’s no wonder, then, that politicians, journalists and voters alike now look to a change in prime minister to improve things when a government is in the doldrums. Keir Starmer had better watch out.

Garnett writes with wit and an eye for a good anecdote. David Cameron’s courtship of the Liberal Democrats after the 2010 election "made Casanova sound like a tongue-tied ingénue". At her post-election party conference, Theresa May received "the kind of sympathetic audience response that, in bygone days, had greeted the arrival of the condemned at Tyburn Tree". The claim that Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng crashed the economy was inaccurate, "but it was certainly not from want of trying".

Downing Street Downfalls is an agreeable companion to contemporary political history and, when it turns to the last ten years, a reminder that there’s nothing quite as strange as the recent past.

This review appears in issue 432 of Liberator magazine.

Ed Davey speaks up for the BBC: Why won't Keir Starmer?

The BBC is under attack as never before. Donald Trump and his cronies have it squarely in their sights – and there are no prizes for guessing why. The BBC is the world’s number one source of trusted news, so of course snake-oil salesmen such as Trump see it as their enemy. 

If your power is built on conspiracy theories and distortions of the truth, the last thing you want is respected, independent journalists exposing that and holding you to account.

Ed Davey speaks up for the BBC in a Guardian article today. Later on he says that Robbie Gibb, a former director of communications for Theresa May who was appointed to the BBC board by Boris Johnson, must have no role in the appointment of the new director general.

Well said, Ed.

Meanwhile, the silence from Keir Starmer is deafening.

Kirsty Williams: Online trolling forced me out of politics

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Kirsty Williams, once leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats and education minster in the Welsh government, has spoken about the pressure that her political career put on her and her family.

She described the online abuse she and other politicians received as "unforgivable" and said it was this level of trolling that forced her to leave politics.

When she told her daughters about her new role as chairwoman of the Cardiff and Vale health board, they said "don't do it, we can't go through this again".

Kiraty was appearing on the Fifth Floor podcast. I can't find a link to that episode, but there are some quotes in the a BBC News story:

"I didn't realise how badly it affected my family," she said, adding that once news of her new role was made public the "pack" were back online "telling everybody what a terrible person I am".

Williams said that being a politician was "no worse or better than many other jobs that people do".

"Most sane people would run a mile from putting themselves into that environment," she said, referring to the level of criticism received.

"I'm worried that it's baked in now. People who go for that job accept that this is how they're going to have to live their lives.

"It's not pleasant."

The belief that "politicians are all as bad as each other and are all in if for themselves" is endemic on the left as well as the right.

I sometimes wonder if the sea of snark and satire we now move in is good for us. After all, the one solid achievement from 94 years of Have I Got New for You has been to help Boris Johnson on his way to Downing Street.

The Leave campaign – Nigel Farage included – called for more non-EU migration to Britain

You'd never know it from the debate on immigration today, but:

In 2016, the official Vote Leave campaign actively advocated for more immigration from non-European countries. This wasn’t a fringe message – it was a central pillar of the campaign. 

This is a quote from an excellent article by Sam Bright, who reminds us that "every element of the Brexit campaign advocated for more non-white immigration – including Nigel Farage".

He backs this with quotes from a contemporary Financial Times report on Leave strategy and from Saqib Bhatti (now a Conservative MP and shadow education minister), Gisela Stuart, Priti Patel, Daniel Hannan, Boris Johnson and Douglas Carswell.

And here's what Nigel Farage had to say during the referendum campaign:

A Daily Mail headline on 8 June 2016 stated:

"More black people will be allowed into Britain if we leave the EU and immigration will become a ‘non-issue’, says Nigel Farage."

Farage claimed that Britain had:

"been stupid to turn our backs on the Commonwealth in favour of EU membership."

He argued that EU freedom of movement had made it "very difficult" for "qualified and skilled migrants from India and Africa" to come to Britain.

According to The Mail, after the Brexit vote, Farage favoured implementing an Australian points-based immigration policy, which would lead to “more black people” qualifying to enter the UK.

Ironically, Boris Johnson’s government – now the whipping boy of the far-right – implemented a points-based immigration system that directly reflected Farage’s favoured position prior to the vote.

That none of this is ever mentioned is a condemnation of the British media and of our politicians.

A sure sign the tide is turning against Nigel Farage: Boris Johnson has condemned him

This is significant. Michael Heseltine once described Boris Johnson as:

"a man who waits to see the way the crowd is running and then dashed in front and says 'Follow me'."

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Peter Jukes argues that Peter Thiel’s name "now sits at the centre of a transatlantic web stretching from Epstein to Boris Johnson’s Downing Street, through the NHS’s largest ever data contract, and into Labour leader Keir Starmer’s recent trip to Washington".

"Federal Council turned out to be the worst committee that I've ever served on. And remember, I've been doing this for the best part of forty years." Mark Valladares has found the first three years of the Liberal Democrats' Federal Council to be an exercise in futility.

"It's easy to condemn anti-migrant protests on moral grounds. What such condemnation misses, however, is that there's also an intellectual error here – an excessive focus on individuals and insufficient attention to structural societal problems." Chris Dillow says we should spend less time looking for scapegoats and more time thinking about socio-economic failure.

Danny Chambers discusses how his varied veterinary career now shapes his work in politics: "I’ve learned the hard way that you can’t look after animals – or other people – unless you look after yourself first. Whether you’re a vet or an MP, it’s incredibly easy to let your own wellbeing slide, to say yes to everything, and to push yourself to the point of burnout."

"'If you love cider, this is cider to the power of 10,' says Barny Butterfield, speaking about the flavours packed by some of this year’s 'special' apples. Indeed Butterfield, the owner of Sandford Orchards, near Exeter, is buying extra tanks to increase cider production after the UK’s hottest summer on record resulted in an abundance of fruit." Zoe Wood reports on the prospects of a vintage year for English cider.

Andrew Hickey celebrates Jethro Tull and Living in the Past.

Ed Davey: Brexit has been a disaster and Starmer must find the courage to change course

Ed Davey has a comment piece on the Guardian website this afternoon, which will presumably be in tomorrow's paper:

Brexit isn’t working, and the British people know it. Poll after poll, including that unveiled this weekend by More In Common for the Sunday Times, shows that people are feeling the terrible damage caused by the deal forced upon us by Boris Johnson, Kemi Badenoch and the rest of the Conservative party, and want something different. The latest shows less than a third of Britons would vote to leave the EU if a referendum were repeated. 

There’s no doubt that fundamental change is needed. There’s no doubt the public will is there to make it happen. The question is: will Keir Starmer seize the moment and deliver it?

This is just the line he should be taking. The sad thing is that Starmer does not appear to be one for seizing moments.

Johnson's name is still poison, and it's good politics to associate Badenoch with the Brexit disaster. But what really did the damage was Theresa May's insistence on leaving the Single Market, which she justified with the mindless slogan "Brexit means Brexit".

That speech was written for her by Nick Timothy - it's arguable that no one alive has done as much to damage Britain. How did the Conservatives reward him? By selecting him as their candidate for a seat that, even in the rout of last year's general election, they could not lose.

Starmer's coming U-turn on PIPs reminds us of the virtues of a parliamentary system

If Keir Starmer backs down on his planned cuts to Personal Independence Payments, he will be attacked for being weak and making a U-turn, but really it will be a sign that our political system works.

He has put forward a policy that does not command a majority in the House of Commons, so he has found that he can't get it through. This ought to happen more often.

If the Conservatives were better at politics, they would have announced they would vote for the cuts, deepening the split in the Labour Party if Starmer went ahead with them.

But Kemi Badenoch made her party's support conditional upon things Starmer was never going to agree to, so it looks as though he will back down.

Watching developments in the United States, where there appears to be no check on what a rogue president can do, has made me appreciate the virtues of a parliamentary system.

Boris Johnson was bundled out of power by a Commons with a safe Conservative majority when his behaviour became unconscionable, and then the ludicrous Liz Truss followed him after only 49 days later.

We Liberals are happiest when we point out the faults of the British parliament, but we ought to remember its virtues too. 

A boiler explosion at Stonton Wyville in 1862 killed four men

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After covering its lost gardens and the drought of 1947, we're going back to Stonton Wyville.

Reader's voice: At least it's not bloody Snailbeach again.

Jeremy Benson, who has visited every village church in Leicestershire and put together a Bluesky thread with photos of each one, told me Stonton Wyville was one of those villages where he struggled a bit to find something interesting to say.

But I think he found something very interesting, because he put me on to another forgotten disaster. Over to the Leicester Advertiser for Saturday 18 January 1862:

Dreadful Boiler Explosion. - Four men killed at Stonton Wyville

One of the most dreadful boiler explosions occurred on Monday last, the 13^th inst., at Stonton Wyville, that has ever been reported in this district. Stonton Wyville is a small agricultural village in the county of Leicester, about six miles from Market Harborough. 

Mr. Dunmore, a farmer, has a stackyard upon his farm, about half a mile from the village, and on Monday hired a small thrashing engine, which is owned by a man named Butcher, who resides at Debdale Wharf, Gumley. This engine was about three or four horsepower, but from the remains of it, it did not appear in working order, and this was confirmed by the evidence we could glean. 

It appears the pump as it is called that feeds the boiler with cold water, was in a bad state of repair, and had been repaired on several occasions. About twelve o’clock in the day they were obliged to stop working to again repair this pipe, and were wrapping it with string and red lead. nearly the whole of the men, 13 in number, were gathered round the engine while the repairs were going on and it was while they were thus engaged that the explosion took place.

The report goes on to give details of whose body parts were blown off and where they landed, which I shall spare you. But I can say that Thomas Lee, William Woodman and Samuel Ashby were killed at once, and George Woolman died a few hours later. The inquest was held at the Fox and Hounds Inn at Stonton Wyville - there is still a Fox and Hounds Farm there, so this was probably that building.

One point of interest about this inquest is that it had called for expert evidence about the condition of the boiler:

Mr. Gimson, engineer, of Leicester, was present, and made a thorough examination of the wreck of the engine, and will give his evidence at the adjourned inquest, so it would not be fair to give his opinion stated privately, at the present time.

Gimson and Co. was founded in 1840 by Benjamin and Josiah Gimson on Welford Road in Leicester. The firm, says Wikipedia, was listed as "Engineers, Ironfounders, Boiler Makers & General Machinists". it later moved to the still-standing Vulcan Works in Leicester.

So it looks as though the expert witness was Benjamin or Josiah Gimson, or perhaps another member of their family. This is the Gimson family that produced Sydney Gimson, who helped turn Desford Approved School, into a force in Leicestershire junior chess, and Boris Johnson's serial biographer Andrew Gimson.

The Leicester Advertiser report said the inquest was due to be reconvened on 29th January 1862. I'll see if I can discover what happened then.

One of Boris Johnson’s ex-wives to urge radical steps to correct Brexit mistakes

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The human rights lawyer Marina Wheeler KC, reports the Independent, has announced she is writing a book urging the prime minister to go much further in his Brexit reset mission and build closer relations with Brussels:

Ms Wheeler’s publisher, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, said her book would compare her ex-husband's Brexit deal to a divorce settlement.

"Like a court order in a divorce, the Brexit deal contains our bare legal obligations", they said.

"Yet as dangerous forces gather and global technologies stoke animosity, we have a wider duty. If Britain and Europe can’t work together, what chance do democracy and the rule of law have?"

Marina Wheeler was married to Boris Johnson between 1993 and 2018. She was widely credited with reigning in Johnson's baser political instincts during his time as Mayor or London.

By chance, yesterday I came across an account of Boris Johnson's first wedding in All the Wide Border by Mike Parker:

In 1987, Johnson married his first wife Allegra Mostyn-Owen at Woodhouse, her family estate 5 miles east of Oswestry. He arrived for the ceremony with no suitable trousers or shoes, lost the wedding certificate, misplaced the ring and told off-colour jokes in his speech. His wife later described the wedding as "the end of the relationship instead of the beginning".

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"From where I’m sitting, it seems inevitable that Farage will suffer the same fate as Johnson. They are beneficiaries of false advertising, who eventually become its victim. That is because they eventually have to deliver on their populist promises. And while they’re willing to turn on their chameleon charm prior to entering office - happy to play the role of anti-establishment antagonist - their natural instincts take over in the corridors of power." Sam Bright goes into the prediction business.

Tim Farron says UK immigration policy fails young people.

Luke Cawley Harrison, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on the London Borough of Haringey, argues that Keir Starmer must stand up to Donald Trump: "The reality is his sycophancy has achieved little: Trump continues to publicly praise Putin, undermine Ukraine, and now suggests 'peace' should come from Ukraine surrendering the land Russia currently occupies from its illegal war. Meanwhile, the UK faces the same senseless tariffs as the Taliban in Afghanistan and the penguins in the uninhabited Heard & McDonald Islands."

"Across the country, a troubling trend is accelerating: the return of institutionalization – rebranded, repackaged and framed as 'modern mental health care'. From Governor Kathy Hochul’s push to expand involuntary commitment in New York to Robert F Kennedy Jr’s proposal for “wellness farms” under his Make America Healthy Again initiative, policymakers are reviving the logics of confinement under the guise of care." Jordyn Jensen on the return of psychiatric imprisonment to the US.

Jay Hulme visits Coventry Cathedral and takes some wonderful photographs.

"The Great Gatsby is a slippery text. It means different things to different people. To some it is a monolith of American literature - a key contender in the Great American Novel sweepstakes - whereas, to others, it has become a cartoonish portrait of a bygone era. Some read it as an excoriation of materialism, others as a vindication of excess. For some it is sibylline, for others, passé." Nick Hilton revisits a classic.

Boris Johnson squawks in pain after he's bitten by an ostrich through car window

It didn't take the judges long to give our Headline of the Day Award to the Mirror. 

In fact they've knocked off early and gone down the pub.

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Emma Burnell reviews Get In by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, and ponders the limitations of the Morgan McSweeney approach to politics: "All too often the project behind Starmer - and McSweeney in particular - seem not to see this. That poor culture and poor behaviour are poor in and of themselves – not excusable when it’s 'one of us' exhibiting it."

"Johnson and Truss at least had the grubby excuse that sucking up to MAGA Americans might be in their own financial interest - for the US market for disgraced former British PMs can be a lucrative one, there being no shortage of wealthy fools there happy to be taken for a ride. Jenrick did not even have that excuse. Nor, of course, does Kemi Badenoch, the party’s actual current leader." Alex Massie is merciless in his dissection of the rotting of the Conservative mind.

The government's agenda for local government is all about size and centralisation, but Jessica Studdert sees a "new local" emerging that involves power, prevention and place.

Daniel Jones and Martin Durham on the role of women in the British Union of Fascists: "If fascist policies were often reactionary or ambiguous, they were not always so. Like almost every other political force in the thirties, the BUF wanted to win newly enfranchised women as supporters and voters, and felt it necessary to put forward policies that would alleviate and improve the conditions of women’s lives."

Rafael Behr argues that Bridget Jones 4: Mad About the Boy is an allegory of the current political crisis. Hear him: "Her heartbreak is a parable of political bereavement, describing liberal angst at the sudden unravelling of institutional and legal norms underpinning European security. (Plus sex and jokes.)"

Ampleforth Abbey has become the latest site to join the Dark Skies Friendly Community scheme run by the North York Moors National Park, reports Yorkshire Bylines.

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"The proposals increase the number of directly elected executive mayors, whether local people want one or not. (West Yorkshire didn't, but got one anyway).  This system, borrowed from the US, places the emphasis on personalities rather than policies.  The personality may be  good at both publicity and policy (Andy Burnham?) or maybe just good at publicity (Boris Johnson.)  Government by councillors elected to implement policies may sound dull bit is likely to be more effective." Peter Wrigley is critical of Labour's plans for local government.

Alistair Carmichael says Labour's dissembling to win power was a gift to the Farages and Trumps of this world.

"At the very least, health-care privatisation has almost never had a positive effect on the quality of care. But outsourcing is not benign either, as it can reduce costs, but seems to do so at the expense of quality of care. Overall, our Review provides evidence challenging the justifications for health-care privatisation and concludes that the scientific support for further privatisation of health-care services is weak." A study by Benjamin Goodair and Aaron Reeves, published in The Lancet Public Health, suggests hospital privatisation is linked with worse patient care.

"As industrial, productive capitalism is abandoned and Britain embraces an economic model based on finance and rentierism rather than making things, graduates and non-graduates will soon end up working alongside one another in call centres, Amazon warehouses or hospitality." Dan Evans argues that its graduates without a future that politicians need to woo.

Gladys Mitchell, one of the major figures of the golden age of crime writing, was interviewed about her work and her favourite authors by B.A. Pike in 1976: "I find every book difficult to write, partly because, even if I make a plan, I seldom keep to it. Then I am apt to get new ideas as I go along, and this often necessitates a certain amount of rewriting."

"Eventually we got to New Mills where we had to pull the canoe out to get past the weir. The kestrel took the opportunity to hop out but then looked unsure what to do next. I encouraged it onto my paddle and then it jumped on to my arm and then flew across the water and perched on the railings. The whole thing was quite magical." Liam Calvert shares a canoe trip through Norwich with a hitch-hiking kestrel.

David Laws and Jim Wallace on Lib-Lab cooperation 1903-2019

The Liberal Democrat History Group website is a goldmine. With my pick and my mule, I have found this video of a fringe meeting the group held during the Lib Dem Conference last September.

Its title was Friends or Enemies, Allies or Competitors? Liberals and Labour 1903–2019, and the speakers were David Laws and Jim Wallace. Wendy Chamberlain was in the chair.

You can also hear David Laws speaking on the subject on a recent edition of Never Mind the Bar Charts - I endorse David's condemnation of Lloyd George, but am slightly mystified by the parallel Mark Pack draws between him and Boris Johnson. 

David's book Serpents, Goats and Turkeys: 100 years of Liberal–Labour relations is published by Politicos.

An official inquiry into 'child rape gangs' reported in October 2022 but the Tories showed no interest

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Elon Musk has demanded an inquiry into 'child rape gangs',  now his acolytes in Reform and the Conservative Party have followed suit.

This demand ignores the fact that one of the streams of the Independent Inquiry Child Sexual Abuse was into "Child sexual exploitation by organised networks" and covered just this ground.

The report from this stream was published in October 2022. You can read its executive summary on the IICSA webpage. It includes the following recommendations:

We recommend the strengthening of the response of the criminal justice system by the government amending the Sentencing Act 2020 to provide a mandatory aggravating factor in sentencing those convicted of offences relating to the sexual exploitation of children.

The government should publish an enhanced version of its Child Exploitation Disruption Toolkit as soon as possible. We recommend that the Department for Education and the Welsh Government should update guidance on child sexual exploitation. This should include the identification and response to child sexual exploitation perpetrated by networks or groups and improve the categorisation of risk and harm by local authorities and other institutions. The toolkit and guidance should specify that the core element of the definition of child sexual exploitation is that a child was controlled, coerced, manipulated or deceived into sexual activity.

We recommend that the Department for Education should, without delay, ban the placement in semi-independent and independent settings of children aged 16 and 17 who have experienced, or are at heightened risk of experiencing, sexual exploitation.

We recommend that police forces and local authorities in England and Wales must collect specific data – disaggregated by sex, ethnicity and disability – on all cases of known or suspected child sexual exploitation, including by networks.

But having set up the IICSA after pressure from all sides of the Commons, the Conservative government proceeded to ignore its conclusions. Notably, there was no progress with bringing a legal duty to report suspicions of child abuse.

And you will recall that Boris Johnson, a few months before becaming prime minister, described this inquiry as "£60m spaffed up the wall".

Private Eye's Literary Review: "A 17-year-old writing in his public school's magazine 50 years ago"

As I usually point out before criticising Private Eye, to establish my credentials, I have bought every issue of the magazine since I went to university in York in October 1978. (Before that I couldn't, because no one stocked it in Market Harborough.)

The Eye's strength at the moment is its investigations. The humour, by contrast, increasingly feels like the product of a sausage machine: feed in the week's events, turn the handle and out it comes. And as for the columnists and regular features, they are often a source of weakness.

I've had a go at The Agri Brigade and Pseuds Corner in the past - the former, I will admit, has recently been very good on the NFU's (and the Lib Dems') campaign against restoring inheritance tax to any holding of farmland, no matter how large.

So let's turn to the Eye's Literary Review, which a couple of issues ago was on to something when, in the course of a review of Ali Smith's Gliff, it complained about the stereotyped and simplistic view of politics held by many literary types.

I love the coverage of culture in the London Review of Books, but I've not forgotten the regular contributor who complained in 2011 that George Osborne was trying to pay off the national debt in one parliament.

Literary Review complains of Sally Rooney and of a caricature Conservative minister in Alan Hollingshurst's Our Evenings. 

I've not read that book, but it's worth pointing out that Tory politicians have discovered the power of intentionally becoming a caricature of yourself. Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg are the obvious examples to cite, but the first Tory to employ the tactic was Ann Widdecombe.

My reason for writing this post is the sheer awfulness of the column's conclusion:

In fact, the orthodoxies of the modern leftie novel are becoming just the slightest bit tedious, and this reviewer put down Glyff with the thought that, really, voting Conservative may have something to be said for it.

If the author was aiming to hit the tone of a 17-year-old writing in his public school's magazine 50 years ago, then he scored a bull's eye. But why would you want to sound like that? And why should we value the opinions on literature of someone who does?