It is my very firm view that when considering social changes since the 1950s, we talk far too much about higher divorce rates and far too little about lower rates of marriages filled with mutual loathing and misery.

(They can probably get away with quite a bit because no one thinks they will actually run the UK. I have a very intelligent friend who knows perfectly well that their foreign policy is insane but frequently votes for them at Westminster to make a point in a safe seat.)

The other original sin is that most - not all, but most - of the horror of the inheritance was obvious before taking it up. Which limits how much sympathy one has for the flak they’d take for admittedly breaking pre-election tax promises. I think they should, but they would deserve some flak for it.

(And, yes, we need substantially more revenue from reliable, relatively non-distortionary, broad-based and tolerably progressive sources now, not within 5-15 years of a new EU-UK customs union entering into force in 2035 or whenever, even if public finances worked that neatly.)

(Which doesn’t necessarily make it a bad theoretical idea for now, given that just rejoining the EU is a non-starter, the EEA or equivalent is also a non-starter and keeping agricultural tariffs in the UK’s hands offers something in FTAs - though the Lib Dems don’t like offering it either! But …)

Yes … I appreciate I am in many ways a technocrat at heart, but I did think ‘You do realise negotiating a partial customs union like this is going to take years, may or may not be welcomed by the EU at base one and now involves lot of knock-on issues with e.g. India, yes?’

I am worried that we are flailing angrily and sounding righteous … but in reality, just speaking loudly while carrying a small stick. There’s a reason the traditional injunction is the other way around.

On a side note, I thought the ‘Cut energy bills!’ shtick from a party meant to be the radicals on climate change action was particularly depressing in its vacuity. (You should boost low incomes directly to avoid poverty, not just valorise removing disincentives to use less energy.)

My expectations of the Greens are generally low, and as usual they have lived down to them.

That’s fair - and I can see there’s a trade-off here. More personal and deeply-thought-through recommended new books and a greater tendency to push a particular POV aren’t the same things, but they are strongly correlated. No excuses on working conditions, of course.

I don’t want my bookshops to tell me what to think - I’d like them to give me a reasonable range of books with a reasonable of perspectives and then let me decide. (And yes, all curation shapes views, but degree and deliberateness vary.)

I think it speaks to a weakness of some independent bookshops: I do periodically feel lectured by them. That’s mainly a curation thing, and only in certain ways - making a point of having a diverse range of authors is good, for instance - but e.g. only stocking one side of a topical issue is not.

I find it astounding that we can cut councils' budgets well into the bone marrow, deny them real choice over how much to raise, weigh them down with statutory duties to the point where they are 75% central government delivery agencies and yet permit the utter chaos that is our varied voting cycles.

This government - Shabana Mahmood in particular, but Keir Starmer owns it too - is fuelling the very fires for which it claims it’s offering an extinguisher, and letting basic norms slide back by decades in the process.

Having noted her part in a protest intimidating a supermarket into closing for stocking Israeli goods and appeasing of religious homophobia over LGBT inclusion in schools, I thought Shabana Mahmood was a nasty piece of work who specialised in feeding people’s worst instincts before it was cool.