Wine Club

Let me start by confessing that Diane Abbott made my heart sink long before she opened her mouth on BBC Question Time last week – and she has made it plumb the depths since. The confected row over the shadow home secretary’s “treatment” on the show showcases all that is rotten about the current Labour leadership, and the warped priorities of deeply unpleasant Momentum activists behind it. Neither Abbott nor I were thrilled to find ourselves sitting in close proximity on the train north for the recording of the show: nothing personal on my part, but less than ideal for rehearsing lines or taking sensitive telephone calls. I briefly considered moving to another seat but didn’t want to be rude.

Britain moved a step close to Weimar yesterday when the Prime Minister used the threat of terrorism to get her way. Being a conservative woman of the upper-middle class, Theresa May did not precisely mimic the cries of ‘there will be blood’ that come from the right’s more deranged corners. You don’t talk like that if you want to get on in Thames Valley society. Rather the Prime Minister issued her warning in the careful language of a bureaucrat. ‘There has not yet been enough recognition of the way that a second referendum could damage social cohesion by undermining faith in our democracy,’ she said. You would have missed her intent behind this seemingly bland statement unless you had been paying attention to the noise that surrounds her.

As soon as Channel 4 announced Benedict Cumberbatch had been cast as Dominic Cummings in its Brexit film, a hatchet job was expected. Some might still see it this way. I found it balanced, gripping, and at times funny, even moving. Plenty will be written about which parts were accurate and which not, but this was drama, not documentary. The story it tells is perhaps the most important story of our times: how politicians had become stuck in a late-90s time warp using a Clinton-era playbook, and thought Remain would easily win the referendum. But they lost because politics changes and the new energy was coming from forgotten voters who saw a chance to be counted. And Dominic Cummings, an outsider with contempt for the establishment, spotted this.

Even though Jeremy Corbyn and the men and women who support him are often shabby and occasionally reactionary figures, the rarest criticism you hear of them is criticism from the left. Political commentary in Britain runs like water through pipes. Conventional opinion holds that if you are left wing, you support the Labour leadership, and if you are not, you don’t. Even though there is an essential left case to be made against the degeneration of Labour into conspiracy theory and personality cults, authors who make it are ignored because they do not fit into the familiar pattern. More than any formal censorship, this control of thinking is the most effective way of shutting out new arguments.

Why us? Why is the UK the first – and only – country to decide to leave the EU? Greenland, Algeria (when it was part of the French empire) and the French Caribbean island of St Barthélemy have all been in the EU and are no more, but the UK is the first full member country to hold a referendum and decide ‘enough’. Why us, and not one of the many other members nursing doubts about the EU? There are many reasons, none of which are to do with us being more inward looking or racist. We are an island, but arguably the most outward looking EU nation. We do have issues with racism, but various studies have concluded we are among the least racist countries in Europe.

Even by his usual standards of self-satire, Jean-Claude Juncker was on top form to open the new year. As he uncorked his final bottle of wine for the year, the president of the European Commission found time to blast out a tweet celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the launch of the euro. It has, according to Juncker, become a ‘symbol of unity, sovereignty and stability’, which has delivered ‘prosperity and protection’ to the people of Europe. Juncker was right about one thing of course. The single currency is indeed 20 this week. It was launched on January 1st, 1999, at least for financial transactions, with the actually notes and coins arriving later. And he was right as well that it has some significant achievements to its name.