Should we be blaming Balliol, rather than Eton, for our political woes?

In our house, the biggest source of tension is that I think there is an important difference between deferring a decision — ‘Do we need carpet on the stairs?’ — and making one. Charlotte argues that ‘Inaction is a choice; not choosing is a choice.’ One that can have consequences, she insists. Like when the house is freezing because the weather has turned. I saw her point on Super Saturday, when MPs voted not to decide — yet — on whether to back Johnson’s Brexit. The decision to delay (‘inaction’) may end up having more momentous consequences than approving the deal in the meaningful vote. Which is why I was annoyed with all those MPs and journalists who dismissed Super Saturday as ‘Soporific Saturday’. It wasn’t. We are just conditioned to see a decision to do nothing as a non-event, whereas it is often the main event — one that can leave your teeth chattering in winter.

There is magic in the air. On Friday, after interviewing the PM, I was accosted outside parliament by a wizard and a prophet. The wizard gave me a spell to communicate telepathically. Fabulously useful. And the prophet told me that within the next year the earth will go dark for four days, during which the earth’s rotation around the sun will slow such that the calendar year will lengthen to 18 months. The prophet thinks that will help us get all those tricky jobs done. Handy for Brexit, I suppose.

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Julie Burchill

Will I ever pee again?

Intra-party fights are known as blue on blue in the Tory party, or business as usual in Labour. But what are they called when hacks fight, as is increasingly happening (and which is yet another sign of a nation having a nervous breakdown)? Peter Oborne has written a serious and long piece for Open Democracy about whether hacks including me give too much weight to semi-anonymous Downing Street briefings, to which I’ve written a dull and serious reply in the same place.