"They're all out for themselves..."

It’s so dangerous, this cynicism about politicians. When you see it in its extreme form, with Putin or Trump, you know you have to resist that black indulgence, of sinking into dismissing the whole tribe, because that is exactly what those bastards want.

On the other hand, the long-running Brexit fiasco doesn’t offer much ground for hope. Having followed the twists and turns every night for months, it was a cleansing break to be away in Portugal for ten days, reading no papers, watching no TV news, and coming back on April 12 to find that no, the April 10 deadline didn’t still apply, and we had another extension. But the chances of either the Tory party or the Labour party coming out of this with anything like an answer seem very remote, and I don’t share Jeremy Corbyn’s blind faith that an election will be the solution. Given the poisonous atmosphere, and the ludicrous first-past-the-post system, I don’t see why we should end up with anything more hopeful than we;ve got. I really do want to believe that somebody up there knows what they’re doing, but God, they make it hard.