You don’t have to be nice to be right – but it would certainly help

But what was Oliver Letwin on about, anyway? Why doesn’t he want more people from Sheffield taking holidays? And why tell Boris Johnson this? ‘We don’t want to see more families in Sheffield being able to afford cheap holidays,’ he apparently told Boris, who told the world.

But what was Oliver Letwin on about, anyway? Why doesn’t he want more people from Sheffield taking holidays? And why tell Boris Johnson this? ‘We don’t want to see more families in Sheffield being able to afford cheap holidays,’ he apparently told Boris, who told the world. But why? The only thing they can possibly have been discussing was airports in the south-east. Where Sheffield isn’t. It’s north-middle somewhere, I think. Isn’t it?

Most probably, Letwin didn’t mean ‘Sheffield’ when he said ‘Sheffield’, but in fact meant ‘the great amorphous mass of the poor’. This would be very bad, obviously, but is not, as it happens, what I’m about to go off on one about.