There will always be an enemy. There have to be enemies. They have to be foreign. Or friends of foreigners.

It probably also means local government has developed unique capabilities in making sense of programmes designed for the UK’s many one-size-fits-all communities, and of finding ever more inventive ways of spending money attached to an elastic band that leads all the way back to the Treasury.

Or even Columbia Pictures. I mean, he’s still in a reality show.

Indeed. The world outside your door looks tired and uncared for but here’s a headline about Morgan McSweeney.

There are, inevitably, also plenty of mistakes in national policy - notably the assumptions behind industrial strategies, when regional realities in some cases mean only a small proportion of people are actually working in those priority sectors.

Wait…what? Are you telling me that the IfG has been an advisor to this televisual travesty?

Michael Gove ‘interviewing’ Donald Trump when Rupert Murdoch was in the room.

There, aced it for you, Al.

They’ve been slow out of the blocks at LA level (where the scale of victories was a surprise to an immature organisation), but scepticism and low expectations about governance are probably on their side. Still in a risky phase, though.

I get that and to a degree the last rites almost feel like they’re being priced in, but how dependent is the Reform birth on the Tory death?

Hmmm…ambitious people is a broad field. The question is whether Reform has room for names, as Farage parties have always been a Farage show. Wouldn’t that be more of a tipping point?

Thanks, Santa.

My (entirely unsupported by research) assumptions are that they fit into 80:20 territory.