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"The party’s organizing basis since the first day Trump took office has been to treat him as a civic emergency. This is the basis for demanding donations, volunteering, and sacrifice. If they are not willing to endure the relatively modest discomfort of a contentious intraparty debate to minimize the chance of a second Trump term, they’ll have broken faith with their supporters." Jonathan Chait says the Democrats will be making a terrible mistake if they stick with Jo Biden.

Paul Bernal warns against heeding Tony Blair's call for the introduction of digital ID cards.

"Doing the right thing economically ... meant Labour opened the door to the Conservatives who enthusiastically exploited popular frustration with austerity - as articulated in the famous 1949 Ealing comedy Passport to Pimlico. This allowed the party to appeal especially to middle-class voters who had supported Labour for the first time in 1945." Steven Fielding warns Labour against repeating the mistake made by Clement Attlee.

Humanists UK provides a history of non-religious prime ministers and other politicians.

"As she sings in Backwoods Barbie (2008), 'Don’t judge me by the cover cause I’m a real good book.' When fans dig into Parton’s songs, books, films, and autobiography, they uncover an egalitarian vision of social cooperation." William Irwin examines Dolly Parton's philosophy.

Katya Witney thinks England chose the right time to retire James Anderson: "In the last Ashes series in Australia, Anderson took eight wickets in the three Test matches he played. He hasn’t played more than three Tests in an Ashes since the 2017/18 series, a calf injury limiting his participation in 2019 and being less effective than Mark Wood and Chris Woakes keeping him out of the XI last summer."

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"Biden labelling Afghanistan 'the graveyard of empires' is, at best, historically illiterate and, at worst, utterly self-serving. It not only negates thousands of years of Afghanistan’s history as a flourishing centre of civilisation, but also - in an act of supreme imperial hubris - shifts the blame for U.S. failures there onto the land and people of Afghanistan themselves." Alexander Hainy-Khaleel takes issue with the Western perceptions of the country.

"As in many other countries, most of the research funding in Norway comes from the government. Thereby, the government funds all stages of research production, but must then pay again to access the research results." Martin Hagve explores the strange economics of academic publishing.

Emma John exposes cricket administrators' regular claims that the game faces ruin and the uses they make of them.

Callum Marius reports moves to reopen York Road tube station to serve the King's Cross Central development.

Jade King traces the development of the artist Graham Sutherland.

"As great as it is to be able to choose whatever you want on Amazon, sometimes what you really want is to have no choice at all." Mark O'Connell makes the case for bad bookshops.

QAnon's mighty wind fails to blow

Believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory spent the last three years believing that Donald Trump was taking on powerful paedophile networks that had hitherto ruled the world.

Trump's defeat did not discourage them: they were certain Joe Biden's inauguration day would see power cuts, the declaration of martial law and his arrest along with all other leading Democrats.

In the Guardian, Julia Carrie Wong reports on the reaction of some QAnon believers to yesterday's events (or lack of them):

As Biden took the oath of office just before noon on Wednesday, a QAnon channel on Telegram lit up with laments.

"We’ve been lied to," wrote one person.

"I think we have been fooled like no other,” another responded, adding: “Hate to say it. Held on to hope til this very moment."

"I feel like I’m losing my mind,” said a third. “I don’t know what to believe anymore."

"Anyone else feeling beyond let down right now?" read a popular post on a QAnon message board. "It’s like being a kid and seeing the big gift under the tree thinking it is exactly what you want only to open it and realize it was a lump of coal the whole time."

There are religious precedents for such feelings of deflation. The 19th-century American Baptist preacher William Miller forecast that Christ would return to Earth on 22 October 1844.

After He failed to appear, the non-event became known among Miller's followers as "The Great Disappointment".

But, reading about the baffled QAnon adherents, I thought first of the above sketch from Beyond the Fringe.

Listen to the podcast Nick Clegg recorded with Joe Biden in 2018

Before he went to work for Facebook, Nick Clegg had a go at being a media personality. One effort in this direction was his podcast Anger Management.

And on 12 July 2018 he interviewed former US Vice President Joe Biden.

But westward, look, the land is bright

Joe Biden's victory in the American Presidential election feels like the first bit of good  news in a long while.

For the present, at least, it seems as though its not just Donald Trump who has been defeated and diminished, but whole worldwide far-right populist movement.

Besides this powerful symbolism, the American people will now enjoy better government and the wider world will benefit from the US rejoining the Western mainstream. Biden has already announced that the US will rejoin the Paris climate agreement, for instance..

And we in Britain may be brought to our senses.

The idea that a trade agreement with the US could take the place of our membership of the single market was always a fantasy. Unlike Trump, Biden is likely to tell us that.

He will also make it clear that there will be no agreement of any sort if Britain refuses to fulfil its obligations under the Good Friday Agreement.

Sometimes you need a candid friend and Britain is in that position now. We must hope that Biden will prove such a friend.