Climate change has become a proxy subject for people who just want to sound off

I know Alistair Darling had left Loretto School, Musselburgh (for Aberdeen University) shortly before Andrew Marr had arrived (en route to Cambridge), but it was still odd to see the pair of them on my television last Sunday. Odd, I mean, that neither mentioned that they’d been to the same top Scottish public school, even though they were discussing whether it mattered that David Cameron had been to an English one.

I was at that Scottish school, too. Decades had passed, though, so our paths didn’t cross. I remember Marr coming back once, to give us a talk on how we could all become editor of the Independent. Alas, none of us yet has.

Darling was altogether more distant. There was a story, probably apocryphal, about a group of boys on a school trip to London spotting him across the central lobby of the House of Commons. The teacher approached, it was said, and asked if he’d mind coming over to say hello. Darling, legend has it, took one look at these clear-skinned boys in their bright red blazers, considered his position on the Scottish left, and legged it. I suppose it might well not be true. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer fancied writing to The Spectator to point out that he’d be entirely happy having a public chat with his fellow old boys from the fourth-poshest public school in Scotland, I suppose I could look quite the fool. He was a Marxist afterwards, you know. Or a Trotskyist, maybe. I forget.

Drawing battle lines at PMQs last week, Gordon Brown had David Cameron dreaming up policy on the playing fields of Eton. I’m trying to imagine that pair on the playing fields of Loretto. Marr I see as a wiry flanker; lots of tape around those ears.