There’s no way the Scottish National party would vote down a minority Labour government and put the Tories back in power

Take 10 paces back and ask yourself, what just happened? Only when you appreciate what the Conservative party has just done can you begin to consider how Labour, and the other opposition parties, should respond. Indeed, the clearer the Tory move becomes, the more obvious the duty of the opposition.

The Queen’s first prime minister was Winston Churchill. Her 14th is a Winston Churchill tribute act. So perhaps it’s no surprise that Boris Johnson’s debut performance as prime minister included a sub-Churchillian riff, extolling Britain’s readiness not to fight the Nazi menace but to cope with a no-deal exit from the European Union. “The ports will be ready and the banks will be ready and the factories will be ready and business will be ready and the hospitals will be ready,” he said, until one half-expected him to declare that we shall be ready on the beaches, we shall be ready on the landing grounds, we shall be ready in the fields and in the streets and in the hills.

Think of it as a coping strategy. Just as supporters of a team knocked out of the cup console themselves that “Now we can concentrate on the league”, so I have tried to reassure myself that a no-deal crash-out from the EU might not be such a disaster. That, you never know, it might even be a good thing.

You’d think it would happen all the time. Given how often they’re drawn from different parties, it should be routine for the US House of Representatives to condemn the president. In fact, it’s rare. Until last night, the House had not made that formal move since it admonished William Howard Taft more than a century ago. So Donald Trump has earned himself yet another place in the history books, rebuked by the House late Tuesday night for telling four members of that body – all women of colour, three of them born in the US and all American citizens – to “go back” to where they came from.

In Britain we sometimes imagine that populism lurks in our future or over there, in Donald Trump’s America or Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. Even those who are alarmed by the prospect of populist politics and all it entails take comfort that we’re not there yet, that it’s still some time, or distance, away. But what if that’s wrong? What if it’s already here?

Twenty six years after he was caught by a hot mic denouncing the Eurosceptic “bastards” in his own cabinet, John Major has proved that he has not lost his knack for making news – and this time he very much knew the microphone was on.

Twenty six years after he was caught by a hot mic denouncing the Eurosceptic “bastards” in his own cabinet, John Major has proved that he has not lost his knack for making news – and this time he very much knew the microphone was on.

Maybe we’re too busy laughing to see it. Perhaps it’s the jokes and memes that Donald Trump generates in abundance, the gift that keeps on giving, that blinds us to a chilling fact that we’d rather not face. Put simply, the leader of the world’s most powerful nation is behaving like an authoritarian dictator, one who threatens democracy in his own country and far beyond.

Here’s a thing they teach in campaign school. If you’re about to make a political promise, first check the calendar. Just to avoid a clash that could make your policy proposal look utterly wrong-headed, inept and at odds with the available evidence.