Holmes spun

One of the few intelligent responses from the liberal-left to our radically altered political landscape was an essay published last year in the impeccably right-on Vox. It began: ‘There is a smug style in American liberalism …It is a way of conducting politics, predicated on the belief that American life is not divided by moral difference or policy divergence — not really — but by the failure of half the country to know what’s good for them.’

You could apply very much the same argument to Britain and, as evidence, you could cite the first episode in the new series of Sherlock. (Shitlock as I prefer to call it, in the interests of accuracy.) I refer you to exhibit A — a scene in which Sherlock comes to investigate the very mysterious death of a youth whose body has been found in a burned-out car in his parents’ drive on the day when he Skyped them from the Himalayas.