High life | 4 October 2018

To London for much too brief a visit: a marriage, lunch with Commodore Tim Hoare, and a look-see for a house. Yes, I am returning to live in London, but under one condition. It’s called Corbyn, and if he comes in, I’ll stay away. It’s rather cowardly, I know, but I did live in London during the closed shops of the early 1970s. I experienced the joys of the three-day week, the uncollected rubbish, the hospitals without electricity, and the unions exercising power over the government until a certain Margaret Thatcher put a stop to it.

I find it hard to understand how people can root for Labour when the party is now openly a communist one. But its friends at the BBC and other channels, and in other parts of the media, pretend otherwise. Back in the 1970s, patriotic Brits such as David Stirling were thinking of mounting a coup to save the nation from going Stalinist.