Quintin Jardine's blog

I am not in Dis-United Kingdom at the moment. I am in Catalunya which has its own troubles but that doesn’t stop me from being outraged by the shenanigans in our Parliament this afternoon.

I worked in that environment in the eighties when it was populated by serious people and when Oliver Letwin was a twerp in Maggie’s policy unit in Number 10. He wasn’t any old twerp, though, for it was he who recommended to his mistress that she use Scotland as a test bed for the Poll Tax.

That goes to show, rather spectacularly, that he doesn’t always get it right, as he proved yet again this afternoon when the dimwit pulled a stroke which condemns us to yet more Westminster chaos, to the delight of the minority who believe that marching through London waving EU flags and demanding something that was rejected at a referendum is in any way democratic.

I have two grandkids and it’s my earnest hope that they both see the 22nd Century. It’s also my hope that they live to see it in a sustainable planet. In that I have just as much interest as the pseudo-hippie anarchists, yummy mummies and attention seekers who are currently doing their best to screw up the traffic around Westminster.

Apart from being futile in that it alienates people like me, the majority I believe, it is also stupid because they are preaching to the reasonably converted, and because in the short, medium and long terms it will do absolutely no good at all.

Rather than chain themselves to manhole covers in London or join the hordes under the thrall of a criminal teenager, (Organising mass school truancy has to be against the law, surely) they should target the real enemy, the planet’s biggest polluters. Let them disrupt the traffic in Beijing, Washington or Delhi and see how they are treated there.

Or, if they are determined and selfish enough to persist, let them pursue a more effective tactic and contract the job out, to Edinburgh City Council, whose elected members have been fucking up the traffic in their city for decades.

Rory Stewart: Ex-Tory leadership hopeful to step down
— Read on news.sky.com/story/rory-stewart-ex-tory-leadership-hopeful-to-step-down-11826934

I believe it was Groucho Marx who said that he wouldn’t want to join a club that would have him as a member. Rory seems to be taking that a couple of stages further by resigning from a party that had already kicked him out.

Looking at our Prime Minister on telly, I don’t believe a word he says, and neither does Ms Kuenssberg.

But I don’t want Corbyn!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49890199

For the avoidance of doubt I regard Boris as a bumptious twat full of misplaced self-importance. He does strike me as the sort of bloke who might squeeze the odd thigh under the table halfway through the third bottle of Rioja, then forget all about it. I don’t have any trouble believing Charlotte Edwards’ story.

However I do have two pertinent questions. 1) Why has it taken twenty years for her indignation to surface? 2) Why did she choose to tell all to the Sunday Times precisely when she did?