The View from Beyond Westminster Bridge

Since I wrote this, I’m hardly likely to disagree with the thrust of Matthew Parris’s column in The Times today, am I?

I distrust clichés such as “Westminster village”, but there are occasions when they fit. Within the space of an afternoon a relatively small number of people – MPs, broadcasters, journalists, party hacks – gathered within a relatively confined space and, communicating mostly with each other, worked each other up into a clear, sharp and settled judgment on the question of the hour. By now it was almost unanimous. The judgment was conveyed electronically to the offices of the national press, bouncing back at Westminster in the form of vituperative editorials and opinion columns by dawn the next morning.

Thus, by echo, a single opinion reinforced and magnified itself. David Davis had acted eccentrically. He had acted independently. He had acted dangerously, self-interestedly. He had been profoundly unhelpful to his Tory team.