Brutal truth

Personally, I felt inclined to blame it on the boogie. Sunshine, no. Moonlight, definitely not. Good times, maybe to some extent. But boogie, for certain. On Facebook, my friend Nathan was wondering which tabloid would be the first to use the headline ‘The King of Pop-ped his clogs’. Soon the jokes were flowing. What’s the difference between Sir Alex Ferguson and Michael Jackson? Ferguson would still be playing Giggs in August. Radio Two was playing the modern equivalent of martial music when a royal dies: every time I switched it on, ‘Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough’. Jackson had long since got enough, but couldn’t stop. ‘Can You Feel It?’ Not any more.

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Rupert Darwall

Labour has walked into a net-zero trap of its own making

But the surprise — and, let’s be frank, mild frisson of excitement — when someone incredibly famous turns their toes up was tempered, in this case, by a sense of inevitability about it all.