Max Hastings

Diary – 24 August 2017

Also: The charm of the circus, the lure of bagpipes, and the fear I just don’t get popular plays

issue 26 August 2017

It has been a summer of tears, both of joy and sorrow. The latter first: how could stones not weep at the spectacle of this Gadarene government leading us towards the cliff edge with a show of insouciance on the part of Fox, Davis, Johnson that would be thought excessive at a wedding, never mind a funeral? At Daily Telegraph leader conferences 25 years ago, our young turks bewailed John Major’s government as the worst in history. Bill Deedes justly rebuked such hyperbole: ‘Are we really saying that Samuel Hoare was a better foreign secretary than Malcolm Rifkind?’ Today, however, it is hard to name a senior minister, with the possible exception of Philip Hammond, who seems to compare favourably with Hoare. However serious the Corbyn menace, and for that matter the Rees-Mogg one, I shall never vote for a Brexit Tory party.

One entirely foreseeable consequence of Brexit is that although it is irrelevant to the gravest problems facing the nation, the government talks about nothing else.

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