And, as if to point out what I think most people already know about Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrats have added their support too, complaining that they should have been rolled out sooner. Thanks Chris.

It’s 2010 now. My dad used to tell me that by this time they expected us all to have flying cars and all that sort of jazz. Instead of that rather cheerful and optimistic vision of the future, what we have instead is onerous queuing, being herded through checkpoints by uniformed goons and  now the possibility that you’ll be randomly selected to be stripped naked by an electromagnetic scanner.

Bin Laden was reported as saying his mission was to destroy liberty in the West. I’d say he’s done pretty well. I was thinking recently about the Twin Towers atrocity and how, even then, we knew that this somehow heralded the start of much darker times. This last decade has felt obsessed with muslims, terrorism, war and oil and then, in the end, economic crisis. The result has been a monumental enlargement of the Government and its power – and almost no discussion or debate around this in mainstream politics. It’s difficult to be optimistic.