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Tuesday, March 29, 2022
Sunday, March 27, 2022
Saturday, March 26, 2022
Friday, March 25, 2022
Thursday, March 24, 2022
Wednesday, March 23, 2022
In the Thick of It: The Private Diaries of a Minister by Alan Duncan (HarperCollins 2021)
Since being elected in 1992 as the Member of Parliament for Rutland and Melton, I had always considered myself to be an instinctive Eurosceptic. I voted ‘No’ in the 1975 referendum, and maintained my belief in the following decades that the EU was undemocratic, inflexible and in need of fundamental reform. As 2016 came around, I still expected to join the Leave campaign, and began discussions to do so. But, as will be seen, I eventually decided against it. With age and experience comes, if not wisdom, greater perspective. Politics cannot always be about indulging one’s natural inclinations.
Like many, I received my share of abuse for backing Remain, but I do not regret it. If anything, events have reinforced me in my belief that I was right to pull back from the brink. Nor do I think I have fundamentally changed my position on Europe. Somewhere along the line from the early 1990s the cause of honest and thoughtful Euroscepticism mutated into a form of simplistic nationalism that strikes me as ugly and demeaning. Rather than devoting their energies to campaigning for the reform of outdated EU institutions and seeking a better deal for the UK, too many Eurosceptics retreated instead to crude sloganeering. There was a rational and pragmatic case to be made for leaving the EU, but few bothered to make it. Instead, we faced a wave of populist nonsense, emotive platitudes and downright lies: a barrage of Farage.
Tuesday, March 22, 2022
Monday, March 21, 2022
Sunday, March 20, 2022
Smiffy
Those Michael Smith stems and flights snapped and broke . . . just like Smiffy broke all those hearts at the PDC World Championship this year.
10/50
Saturday, March 19, 2022
Friday, March 18, 2022
Thursday, March 17, 2022
Wednesday, March 16, 2022
Tuesday, March 15, 2022
Monday, March 14, 2022
Saturday, March 12, 2022
Friday, March 11, 2022
Thursday, March 10, 2022
Wednesday, March 09, 2022
Tuesday, March 08, 2022
Thursday, March 03, 2022
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