THIS morning let us honour Boris Johnson and Kelvin MacKenzie, newspaper columnists who certainly know how to make themselves look stupid. Well done, boys. You win today’s Right Pair of Tits Award.

For Johnson, who must still look at himself in the mirror and say, “I am the foreign secretary – how did that happen?”, his new government role sits uneasily with his past as a high-profile newspaper columnist. Now he has to face those parts of the world he has earned a fortune insulting. And to be fair to Johnson, he is a good columnist when on form, as well as one of the most highly paid, rumoured to have been coining in £250,000 a year (so his government role could actually cost him money).

But his opinion-splattered past caught up with him yesterday at a joint press conference with US secretary of state John Kerry, when he was forced to defend himself during his first London press conference in his surprise new comedy turn. Hostile questions from US journalists repeatedly asked the foreign secretary to explain the “outright lies” and insults to be found in his journalism, including calling Barack Obama part-Kenyan and hypocritical.

Johnson launched into a rambling defence of “stuff that I’ve written over the last 30 years… all of which in my view have been taken out of context, through what alchemy I do not know”. Ah, the old “out of context excuse”, that favourite shabby note waved by a columnist in a corner (although I do admire the construction of “through what alchemy I do not know”).

There is more of this, too much to include here in full, for Boris did go off on a splendid bumble, beginning: “There is a rich thesaurus of things that I have said that have one way or the other I don’t know how that has been misconstrued. Most people when they read these things in their proper context can see what was intended, and indeed virtually everyone I have met in this job understands that very well particularly on the international scene. We have very serious issues before us today…”

Ah, yes. Those serious issues. And a man for the job who appears to still think he’s appearing on Have I Got News For You – except that’s a little unfair, for Boris Johnson is a smart and serious man beneath the mock-Tudor bumbling.

The trouble comes in giving such high-profile roles to outspoken journalists. They step into the room carrying a whole lot of potentially embarrassing baggage, in Boris’s case a Gladstone bag stuffed with colourful insults he has hurled at the world. And now he has to tote that bag wherever he goes. “Ah, sorry, chaps…”

But at least Boris Johnson is a clever columnist, although not to all tastes. Kelvin Mackenzie is more of a clod-hopping controversialist, a dull preacher of plodding populism. In his column in the Sun, a paper he used to edit, MacKenzie approached the Nice massacre by having a go at the Channel 4 News presenter Fatima Manji, “a young lady wearing a hijab”, adding: “Was it appropriate for her to be on camera when there had been yet another shocking slaughter by a Muslim? Was it done to stick one in the eye of the ordinary viewer who looks at the hijab as a sigh of the slavery of Muslim women by a male-dominated and clearly violent religion?”

Manji needs no defence from me as she is robustly capable of looking after herself, as she did with an article in the Liverpool Echo newspaper. Here is some of what she said: “Mr MacKenzie’s article was but one wild screed in a long-running and widespread campaign to intimidate Muslims out of public life.

“[He] has attempted to smear 1.6 billion Muslims in suggesting they are inherently violent. He has attempted to smear half of them further by suggesting they are helpless slaves. And he has attempted to smear me by suggesting I would sympathise with a terrorist.

“I will not be deterred… by the efforts of those who find the presence of Muslims in British cultural life offensive.”

In MacKenzie’s defence, he was writing an opinion column in a popular tabloid newspaper, and he stirred up a storm – which is part of his role. Freedom of speech involves people being free to express opinions that may cause offence. I’d say that MacKenzie was being offensive in a dull and clanging manner. And in a free society that is his right, even if what he had to say was on the wrong side of the stupid line. And Fatima Manji was free to defend herself, which wrapped the situation up neatly.

While I don’t share or enjoy the sort of opinions Kelvin MacKenzie puts on the page, it is right that he should be able to do so. And even better if saying such things ends up making him look a bit of a tit.

“THEY’RE thinking of banning fish and chips at the coast, you know.”

“Well that’s not very sporting – they’ll be banning ice cream next.”

“That too, apparently. Yeah, I blame the David Essex incident. It said in the Daily Star the other day that the 1970s singer came under savage attack when he tried to eat an ice cream.”

“I heard it was a cousin of Sid’s…”

“Psycho Sid’s cousin?”

“That’s the one – and he’s just as mad. Crazy as a kittiwake, that one.”

“I remember all the headlines in the Star last year – ‘Psycho seagulls keep out illegals’.”

“That was the French lot bombing migrants in Calais. That newspaper’s got a thing about us lot.”

“More shit on the front page of that newspaper than under the Tyne Bridge – and there is a lot of shit under that bridge.”

“One of our proudest achievements, that bridge.”

The two friends hop along their ledge and stretch their wings. “The Daily Star is obsessed, simply obsessed. I perched on the sill outside the newsroom and saw this guy on the newsdesk going red in the face. ‘Get me stories about evil seagulls,’ he said. ‘As evil as you like. Those bastards have got it coming.’ A twitchy-looking reporter said he’d heard a rumour about someone’s false teeth being nicked. ‘Not bad,’ said the red-faced man. ‘But how about a seagull carrying off a baby. That’s what we need…a famous baby, maybe even a Royal baby. Oh joy! Those evil gulls are good for business’.”

The seagulls take a moment to scan for opportunities. “Nice bald head over there, next to the woman who’s just come out of that hairdressers. Fancy a stretch?” They swoop down, enjoying as ever the rush of air, and enjoying even more the cries of anguish. “Double-hit there,” the first gull says, looking round. “Some chips over there. Hope they’ve remembered the salt.”

Back on the ledge, the two friends squabble over their chip booty, with the first gull taking more than his fair share.

“You’ll get fat eating like that – then you’ll never be able to take off and it’ll serve you right.”

“Can’t resist a chip.”

“How about pudding? There’s some old singer down there unwrapping a Cornetto. The trick is to wait until last bit of paper has been pulled away and…”

Off they swoop, returning a moment later with a whole ice cream. This drips onto their claws as they eat. Then they fight over the cone. One seagull burps (do seagulls do this? They do for the purposes of this entertainment). The other one says: “Do you mind! God what a smell!”

“The thing I don’t understand is that lot beneath us make a right mess of the world, filling it with dispute and misery, and all they can do is blame us for everything. Last year was the worst I’ve ever known. The newspapers were full of anti-seagull stories. It was all very gull-ist if you ask me.”

“Do you think Brexit will be bad for us?” “Who knows? Bad for everyone else, so I don’t see why not.

“But what about all those foreign gulls coming over here and pinching the chips of our birth right?”

“A seagull is a seagull, brother – we’re all the same under these feathers. Well I don’t know about you, but I fancy a trip down to London. We can find that £17 million house where David Cameron is putting his feet up after screwing the country.”

“Yeah, some legacy. All those empty slogans about the big society, and he goes and hits the poorest with the bedroom tax. And everyone goes on about Tony Blair and Iraq, but what about Cameron and Libya – he intervened, left that country in a dangerous mess, then wandered off.”

“And he made the financial crisis of 2007 even worse by encouraging financial speculation, failing to regulate the housing market and privatising large swathes of the public sector at huge cost to the taxpayer.”

“You’ve been reading the Guardian again, haven’t you?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about…”

“History will remember Cameron for taking a huge gamble that buggered up the country. So it would be nice to shit on his head.”

“And keep an eye out for Boris, too – that would be a double hit. Mind you, how we didn’t get him while he was dangling from that wire, I’ll never know.”

“How about the new prime minister?”

“No, I’ve heard that Theresa May has some sort of force-field round her that quietly deflects all the shit thrown her way.”

“It won’t last.”

On their way to seek out the former prime minister, the seagulls pass over a playground near Westminster, a place favoured by members of the Labour Party. There’s a helter-skelter in the middle. Labour MPs are queueing up to slide down while someone is trying to go the other way.

“Who’s the bloke with the beard – the one trying to climb up when everyone else is coming down?”

“That’ll be Jeremy Corbyn.”

They fly a little further. “Looks like we might be in luck. Down there to your right: complacent looking chap with a pink face. Just coming out of that expensive-looking house. Double points if you can hit that bald spot he’s been trying to hide for years.”

Flushed with success, having emptied themselves to satisfying effect, the two gulls fly over a newsagent’s. “Looks like things might be moving on,” says the first gull. “Why is that?” “Just spotted today’s Daily Star and the headline says, ‘Invasion of the killer jellies’.”

“Well, it’s about time those bloody jellyfish had their turn in the spotlight. But they’ll be back to us in a day or two. They just can’t leave us gulls alone.”

IF you spend any time on social media, and heaven knows I do, you will have come across people sticking up for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Often they will talk about the “Westminster bubble” and cite examples of media bias against Mr Corbyn, from the newspapers and in particular from the BBC.

The danger with this is that the very people who dismiss the “Westminster bubble” then risk creating their own sealed-off environment, what might be termed the “Corbyn bubble”.

Now it is true that a bubble exists over Westminster. The place is a sealed-off hot-bed of political squabbles watched by members of the media who sit in the same over-heated tent. And, as is often stated by Corbyn supporters, what happens in that hot house doesn’t always relate to life as it is lived away from Westminster.

Yet the concerted efforts of the fans of Jeremy to portray their leader as a man much sinned against have now created their own bubble. Like its Westminster counterpart, this shelter is hermetically sealed off from the world and allows those who gather there to become a little dizzy from breathing the stale air.

Mr Corbyn’s new puritans believe that almost anything and everything is a plot against their man, and plenty of left-leaning political websites now exist to reinforce their theories and concerns. This, by the way, is a good thing in that nowadays it is easier to seek out different opinions than it used to be; but such sites should be treated with the same caution a left-wing person might feel picking up the Daily Telegraph. Bias can be painted in many colours.

Plenty of people believe that Mr Corbyn has been treated shamefully – by the media and by MPs in his own party. And maybe he has. But media biased against Labour is an old game, especially from the newspapers – ever since Neil Kinnock was caricatured as a light-bulb on the front page of the Sun newspaper, next to the headline: “If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.”

Labour has had to bear those bruises for years. They are not unique to Mr Corbyn.

The Labour leader’s greatest achievement has been the building of grassroots support, winning more new supporters than all the other parties put together. This indisputable good has, with heavy-handed irony, also been his undoing.

This is because grassroots support alone cannot sustain him. He leads a party that has to operate in the bubble of Westminster politics; he leads a party whose MPs have to be willing to follow him. If too many of those MPs lose confidence in their leader, they cannot ask voters to put faith in his as a potential prime minister. And if they can’t do that, everything turns into the rancid mess we now see.

Surely everyone in Labour should be pushing in the same direction and wanting the same ends: namely a fairer and more equal society. But instead they are breaking off into factions and fighting each other.

And this is a disaster for anyone who feels that the country deserves a proper opposition. They could hardly have chosen a worse time to have a leadership contest, and whether the two contenders, Angela Eagle and Owen Smith, would be any better than Jeremy Corbyn is anyone’s guess. Sadly, too many people will just shrug at that question.

And how telling that this should happen at a moment when, with typical swift ruthlessness, the Conservative Party should be putting itself in order after all the Brexit chaos it helped to cause. As David Cameron withdraws to his pal’s £17 million house while telling himself what a good job he has done, Theresa May, that brisk leader of the quietest coup, is making sure she looks to be completely in charge. Meanwhile the Labour Party is busy punching itself. And ain’t that smart.

I WENT for a run just now and thought about France. I thought about the country I have visited many times, more than any other, even though I still don’t speak the language. And I thought about France in shock after the massacre of innocent people in Nice.

I thought too of the woman I saw on the BBC news, interviewed the night after the latest appalling incident to hit France. She and her husband had been separated in the middle of the chaos and carnage, but found each other again later.

The husband gave a calm account of what had happened, while his wife clung wordlessly and tearfully to his arm. Shock takes people in different ways. He wanted to talk, to lay out the details; she was too appalled for words.

It made me wonder about what we see on the TV news. Was it right for the camera to linger on that poor woman’s face? She was clearly distraught and filming her might be considered an intrusion. Yet if terrible things happen in the world, as sadly they do, then we shouldn’t hide from them, should we?

It’s tempting to hide. Sometimes all you want to do is hide. But this is our world, our mess. So if we hide we are not seeing or dealing with anything.

As I ran I thought, “Why France?” The answer to that probably lies in a combination of western secular liberalism and military action in Syria and Iraq. France has been the standard bearer for the rights of the western secular state to conduct itself away from religion, and a defender of human rights, free speech and democracy – all things hated by the rabidly intolerant likes of Isis.

As the sweat bubbled my brow, I thought too about what, if anything, the answer to all this might be. After my blog on Friday, a friendly critic lobbed in the observation that western countries were reaping what they had sown and that, to paraphrase the US philosopher and thinker Noam Chomsky: “The best way to prevent terrorism is to stop participating in it.”

I know a little about Chomsky, so went to find out a little more, reading a piece he had written and watching a speech online. His thoughts are too numerous and too complicated to include in detail in a post-run blog from a man on a ledge. But a big part of his thesis is that we don’t deal with the problems that cause terrorism, just send in the bombers – and make the problem worse, and increase the likelihood of further terrorism.

This is probably true. The pattern was set after 9/11 and the main motivator was revenge, rather than thinking what that revenge might lead to. France’s official reaction to the latest of too many horrors has been in that mould too, promising to extend airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.

Whether or not this is right in the long term, it is easy to see why such a response happens. The only other immediate alternative is to do nothing, or at least nothing visible to the shocked people of France. Whatever happens, the likes of Marine Le Pen, leader of the Far Right Front National, step into the hostile vacuum and spread their poison. Such tragedies usually “play well” for the far right, seemingly giving legitimacy to their intolerance.

So something is done, even if it turns out to be the wrong something. More of the same. But do we really expect France to react any differently; and would we react any differently? There are no easy answers and that’s the problem.

Mostly, though, I thought about all those people, men, women and children who had set out to enjoy the fireworks on Bastille Day. In particular, I thought of Fatima Charrihi, aged 60, a Moroccan living in France. According to reports, Fatima, a mother of seven, may have been the first victim of the lorry driven by the French-Tunisian Mohamed Lahouriej-Bouhlel. She wore the veil and, according to one of her children, practised “a true Islam – not the ‘Islam’ of the terrorists.”

I am going back to France in ten days or so, for a short break to visit my brother who lives there most of the time, travelling with my mother and other brother. A lifetime ago we drove round France in a Mini-van, parents in the front, the three of us boys in the back, plus tent, sleeping bags and boxes of cornflakes. This time we are flying.

We took our three on family holidays to France, in a bigger car and with the tents already put up when we arrived.

We should all visit France more often right now.

THERESA May’s first-day reshuffle was a ruthless affair, with A Game of Thrones-style list of bloody casualties. Yet on the same day, the appalling news from France, a country too often struck by such news of late, put her manoeuvres into cold perspective.

What the new prime minister pulled off was a startling and ruthless display, with all traces of the Cameron era almost removed. It was as if she had sent in one of those white-suited crews you see in TV crime dramas to clean up the scene-of-the-coup mess.

There were surprises amid all the changes in this exercise, which might be termed A Throne of Games, with Mrs May showing that she is now in that Tory throne and will shape the party to her wishes.

Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary was the biggest shocker, Mrs May’s wild-card present to an unimpressed world. Perhaps she has a sense of humour after all, or maybe she just wants to keep Boris out of the country, bowing and scraping his way round parts of the world where he has in the past insulted people. That’s a big map, like an old Empire map, but with the globe stained blond instead of pink.

The comings and goings are too numerous to mention here, but we cannot move forward without considering Jeremy Hunt. If Boris Johnson is the clownish wild card, Hunt is the “you-what?” joker in the pack. Hunt remains as health secretary, a role to which he seems monumentally ill suited having helped drag out the dispute with junior doctors, while also being unable to dismiss fears that he is intent on dismantling the NHS bit by shoddy bit.

Gove has gone, but what else did he expect after his backstabbing of Boris. Mrs May has taken the Michael, as it were, and shoved him out into the cold where he now belongs.

Maybe her oddest appointment lies in making the deeply Eurosceptic David Davis her Brexit Secretary, a man mostly untried in government being given a role of such unknowable complexity. Incidentally, something which hasn’t really been spelt out, perhaps because no one knows, is just how much Brexit will cost the country; how many billions will be frittered on legal fees and moving costs, on untangling the thousand ties that bind us to Europe?

Malcolm Rifkind, the former foreign secretary, praised Mrs May’s “ruthless” reshuffle and her “strategic” vision, saying it showed strong leadership. And so it does, but we won’t know if it is good leadership until we are some miles away from this quiet coup.

The most striking sacking was of hi-vis chancellor George Osborne, who almost shared the premiership with Cameron, and now finds himself without a government role of any sort.

All of this is engaging to those who like to watch politics, and interesting in that Mrs May, who has suggested that ordinary people are tired of political games, shows herself to be a ruthless player of the game.

But the news from Nice casts a shadow over everything she has done. Her display of power has, with tragic irony, been set against another exercise in brutality that shows the limits to political power. With at least 84 people dead in the third major terrorist incident in France since last November, killed as a lorry ploughed through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day, it is possible here to see just how little power politicians have over the appalling events that can strike the country they govern.

If a terrorist, or a man unhinged by his beliefs and righteous obsessions, can take a lorry and zigzag it through a crowd for more than a mile, killing men, women and children, how can a premier or president do their job?

President Hollande has had the toughest of times to fulfil his role, and here he was again, ashen-faced as he said that: “Nothing will make us yield in our will to fight terrorism. We will further strengthen our actions in Iraq and Syria. We will continue striking those who attack us on our own soil.”

This is fully understandable, although it was also the US position after the 9/11 attacks, leading to the Iraq war and all that has followed. France is bombing Isis and many will wish them well in that operation, while at the same time having no idea if it makes a difference or hits the right targets.

HERE are a few post-it notes on a political scandal…

NOTE ONE: David Cameron departs as prime minister today with the praise of his cabinet colleagues ringing in his ears. Some who salute him now do so after helping to bring about his downfall. But the main cause of his decline lies in himself. He held the Euro referendum for his own party’s political ends to settle an ancient squabble about Europe. He promised the vote in the certainty that he would win. This confidence came from the sense of entitlement that saw Cameron rise young and swift, and then condemned him to failure. A sort of political tragedy, if you wish.

NOTE TWO: History gets to judge, not us – not even those of us who dislike Cameron. Has he been a success, as his back-slapping colleagues tell him? More successful in opposition than in government, perhaps; good at reshaping his party and plucking out some of the nasty thorns; good at promising a new sort of Conservative ideology; and bad at fulfilling all those golden promises. Good at the phrases – the big society, tackling poverty – but bad at making them stick. All the fine words on poverty don’t match stack up against the statistics, as Julia Unwin of the Rowntree Foundation said on the BBC news last night. A plus point: the energy he put into gay marriages, not exactly a typical Tory measure. But on the chewed fingernails of the other hand, he failed to win one election out-right and scraped a surprise victory in the second election, only to set himself on fire shortly afterwards.

NOTE THREE: But what about history? You’ve not answered that yet. Ah, true. History will make up its mind. But as Tony Blair has a chain marked ‘Iraq’ hanging round his neck for eternity, so will David Cameron have a matching one saying ‘Europe’.

NOTE FOUR: Former home secretary Theresa May becomes prime minister today without a vote being cast, aside from those fellow MPs who supported her bid. A proper contest disappeared when Andrea Leadsom cried off after a bad weekend’s coverage in the media, leaving May as the last woman standing. Leadsom was a disaster, although her CV was rumoured to have been short-listed for a leading fiction prize. Sadly, she is likely to be rewarded with a seat at May’s table.

NOTE FIVE: That history thing again. Theresa May once said that Gordon Brown didn’t have a foot to stand on as prime minister and should call an election, saying: “He has no democratic mandate.” Now she is standing in his shoes, although not literally as Gordon doesn’t look good in leopard skin kitten heels. May now has no democratic mandate, although she does share some striking similarities with Gordon Brown: both owe their moral compass to fathers who were church ministers.

NOTE SIX: Almost everyone who caused the Brexit disaster in the making has now left the stage: Cameron, that dangerous clever buffoon Boris Johnson, the back-stabbing Michael Gove, Nigel Farage – all have either resigned or had their moment snatched from them. Your country thanks you. After propelling us into this quagmire, you wandered away and left us to it. Thanks a bloody bunch.

NOTE SEVEN: This one’s for the Labour Party. Say what you like about the Tories, but they are an efficient bunch, pulling together in unity even while the blood is still wet on the shag-pile. Labour prefers to choose its moments badly. With the Government in disarray and rudderless, with the Tory Cabinet biting lumps out of each other, the Labour Party decided to have a leadership contest, not even a year after the last one. And frankly I don’t care whose fault it is and care even less whether Jeremy Corbyn – socialist saint or stubborn sinner against common sense – is the victim or the cause of the problems. Just get a grip and start being an opposition. Scotland has deserted you, great swathes of the once-industrial north voted to leave Europe – your hinterland is crumbling. And all you can do is squabble. It’s pathetic.

NOTE EIGHT: Nothing much on the telly apart from politics. So it’s time for a good book. Thankfully I have one to hand – A God In Ruins by Kate Atkinson. A third of the way through and it is fantastic so far.

HERE is all you need to know about the stupidity of gun laws in the US, wrapped up in a sentence taken from a report over here on the latest gun atrocity over there – “It is legal in Texas to carry a rifle.”

It is legal to what where? Yup, in Texas you can openly carry a rifle so long as long as you are not doing so in a “manner calculated to cause alarm”.

Perhaps we Brits are a sensitive lot, but just seeing a rifle being carried openly in public is like to cause alarm. Seeing police officers at the airport carrying rifles causes alarm, never mind any loose knucklehead who wants to go out with the latest Texas accessory.

There is a country song from Lyle Lovett called That’s Right (You’re Not From Texas), and I hate to drag this cheery ditty into the argument following the Dallas massacre. But no, I am not from Texas and I just don’t understand. I don’t understand it at all. Why would anyone carry a rifle unless they wished to show off in a gruesome fashion; or unless they were an idiot of the first order? Nope, this not from Texas man cannot grasp that one bloody little bit.

The following information comes from the Politifact Texas website, which reports that two years ago Mike Hashimoto, an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, took exception to Texans strolling round with rifles, describing them rather splendidly as “chuckleheads strapping on their long rifles and marching into the local Chipotle or Chili’s or Home Depot. Whatever point they may have about gun-owner rights or Texas law they drown in look-at-me stupidity”.

Politifact Texas asked the question, and the legislative director of the Texas State Rifle Association, Alice Gene Tripp, said that the Texas penal code restricted handguns, but was silent about toting long rifles and shotguns.

Following the latest shooting, the police mistakenly released an image of a man they wanted to question and were searching as a suspect, sharing the image on Twitter. Mark Hughes quickly handed himself in, pointing out that he had done nothing illegal, although he did hand his rifle over to police. It is easy to understand the police reaction as Mr Hughes was carrying a rifle at a time when a black army veteran with a rifle had opened fired on a peaceful protest, killing five white police officers.

Someone in Texas needs to change that law and change it quickly.

As a sign of how deplorably mad the US is on guns, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were forced to postpone events in their presidential election campaigns – for the second time in a month, following the massacre of 49 people at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Yup again, twice in a month. And that’s 54 people killed by bullets in that short interlude. Maybe it’s time Clinton and Trump addressed the issue in their speeches – although Barack Obama has done so many tearful times, without making a difference at all.

While we were away recently, we met some cultured and interesting Americans, a useful reminder that the US is a beautifully wide and lovely country containing many good people. Sadly, it is also a country locked into an ancient frontier mentality when it comes to guns. I have said it before, but here goes: if guns were not so widely available, then these incidents wouldn’t happen. Simple, isn’t it?

We might get many things wrong over here, and heaven knows we’re in post-referendum mess now, with half the country pissed off, and with two political parties coming apart at the seams, but at least we show a bit more sense about guns.

DOES being a parent make you a different person? I am a parent times three and have no idea.

This tricky question arises thanks to that irksome woman who wants to be prime minister. No, not that one – the other one. I had no intention of returning to Andrea Leadsom this morning, as she doesn’t make my heart sing, but there you go.

The front page of The Times has the headline: “Being a mother gives me edge on May – Leadsom.” Mrs Leadsom, who is 53, has two sons and a daughter (the same formation as in our family). Mrs May, who is 59, is married but never had children; she has said little about this, but has suggested that being childless was not a choice.

In an interview with The Times, Mrs Leadsom said: “I am sure Theresa will be really sad she doesn’t have children so I don’t want this to be ‘Andrea has children, Theresa hasn’t’ because I think that would be really horrible.” But she later suggested that being a mother was an advantage – “Genuinely I feel that being a mum means you have a real stake in the future of our country, a tangible stake.”

After the interview was printed, Mrs Leadsom took to Twitter, tweeting directly to The Times: “This is the worst gutter journalism I have ever seen, I am so angry – I can’t believe this. How could you?”

Before going any further, it is worth pointing something out. If Mrs Leadsom thinks that is “gutter journalism”, she should shuffle down to the newsagents and read some of the other newspapers.

What happened here seems simple enough: a politician gives an interview because she wishes to put her case and be seen; a delicate topic is raised and addressed; the report is written and, on publication, the politician comes out in boils of righteousness.

The Times recorded the interview and an excerpt was played on the BBC Today programme this morning, containing the quotations on which the headline was based. A headline condenses a story into a few words, and the one in The Times encapsulates what Mrs Leadsom says, although the words chosen are the newspaper’s, not hers.

The only way Mrs Leadsom could have avoided this row would have been to decline to answer questions about being a parent. Instead she went for the “both-ways” approach: suggesting it would be unseemly to make the comparison, then going ahead and saying that as a mother she has a better understanding of life.

Cake having been had and eaten, she brushed the crumbs off her lips and took to Twitter to complain. In political terms, being a parent surely makes no real difference, and it was foolish of Mrs Leadsom to go on about “being a mum”. Motherhood didn’t exactly soften Margaret Thatcher, so there is no reason to suggest that having given birth three times will make Mrs Leadsom more or less of a politician.

Does being a parent make you a better or wiser person? No, I still don’t have a clue. Life took a turn years ago and the me without children followed a different route. That version of me would have lived a different life, a wealthier life in all probability, but a life less rich in human experience. And that me wouldn’t now have three grown-up children taking their own paths up the mountain.

I recall that when the children were young, we could be very child-centred, suddenly aware of the importance of our children and of all children. Young parents tend to be obsessed with children to the point of being a little boring on the topic. I am sure we were at times. It’s the nature of being a new parent.

Then life moves on and, while you don’t love your offspring any less, they have their lives, you have yours; the paths separate, cross again, but the parental geography is always there, the family map with its different contours.

I know that I am a different person than I would have been without children; different but not better, and certainly not more suited to making sense of life than if I had remained childless. Just a man trying to do the best I can, to slightly misquote Van Morrison.