I don’t reckon much to the new version of Shameless, with Boris Johnson in the title role and Michael Gove unblushingly telling the BBC Today programme that he never stole the wheels off that constitution.

Welcome, if you’ll pardon the inelegancy, to the Twatsworth Estate.

Unlike the Manchester setting of the original Channel 4 TV series, this estate is peopled by upper-class chancers and truth dodgers. In a shocking plot twist at the end of last season, Johnson came up with a wheeze to kidnap parliament so that the neighbours in Commons Close would stop asking questions about his peerless Brexit scam.

That bit of political dodging and diving fell apart yesterday when the filth, aka the Supreme Court, ruled the suspension illegal, leaving MPs and peers free to return to parliament today.

Johnson has been in New York meeting chief chancer and dodgy dealer Donald Trump (don’t look at the photographs if you’ve just eaten). Now he’s flying home be hauled before parliament to explain himself.

A glance at today’s headlines won’t give much comfort to the Eton version of Frank Gallagher (famously a father of six, don’t you know). To be fair, let’s start with two that do.

First up is a totally bonkers headline from the Sun – “Ooh you are lawful… but we don’t like you!” It comes to something when your best riposte to a legal ruling unfavourable to your side is a play on words from a dead and buried TV comedy that limped to its grave in 1981.

Incidentally, the Dick Emery Show appears never to have been repeated, possibly for good reason. Whatever, the editor of the Sun seems to have been a fan.

That odd headline tops a round-up of reactions from readers who “bombarded” the paper, allegedly, while reacting with “fury”. The Sun reports Dave Martin of Sheffield as saying: “The elite have shafted us again.”

How handy to find a reader in Sheffield who speaks just like the Sun writes, but we shall return to the elite after the adverts.

Over at the Daily Express, aka the Brexit Beacon, we have: “Unlawful? What’s lawful about denying 17.4m Brexit!” This is a blatant and calculated misunderstanding of a Supreme Court ruling that had nothing to do with Brexit, but everything to do with allowing parliament to carry out its constitutional fuctions. The court unanimously ruled that there had been no reason – “let alone a good reason” – to advise the Queen to prorogue parliament for five weeks in the run-up to the Brexit deadline of October 31.

Brexit is the backcloth for this decision, but not the reason – and the Express and the Sun know this but twist the result to mislead their readers and stir up discontent.

Other headlines tell the story straight, with The Times saying: “PM flies back to chaos”, the FT going for “Johnson faces calls to resign as judges rule parliament’s closure unlawful” and the Guardian slapping down the PM with: “He misled the Queen, the people and parliament.”

Johnson will resist all calls to leave the Twatsworth Estate, and instead will fall back on another disreputable wheeze, the people versus parliament.

This mess is basically where referendums get you: a simple yes/no choice, just put your mark here, and everything will be simple. Only it isn’t and wasn’t and never could be – and, besides, in a country of 66m people, why do we only ever hear about the 17.4m who voted to leave the EU, some of whom will have died, changed their mind or possibly both?

As for this being the elite thwarting the will of the people, Brexit is a project of the elite who want to run Britain to their own best ends.

You can’t get more elite than Boris Johnson, for heaven’s sake. Or Jacob Rees-Mogg. Or Nigel Farage.

Heading up the Supreme Court was Lady Hale, a plain-speaking, morally sound grammar schoolgirl from Yorkshire – and nowhere near as elite as the latest Eton old boy trying to run/ruin the country.

I know who I’d rather have by my side.

According to Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, a show of hands is a “vote at a meeting, taken by those present raising their hands for or against a motion”. Nothing in there about it being a bit of a stitch-up at a Labour conference.

Yesterday – and yesterday is so yesterday, as we shall discover in a moment – Jeremy Corbyn saw off a grassroots attempt to turn Labour into an out-and-out Remain party.

At the party’s conference in Brighton, Wendy Nichols, the chair, appeared to say a pro-Remain motion had been carried. Then she had a hushed conversation with Jennie Formby, Labour general secretary and Corbyn fixer (thumbscrews may or may not have been involved), and declared the motion had been lost.

Calls for a card vote, a more accurate way of counting than hands shoved in the air, were rejected. So Labour delegates stuck a seal of approval on a box of Mr Corbyn’s Exceedingly Dodgy Brexit Fudge.

When an election is called, Labour will now adhere to Corbyn’s preferred plan, codenamed For God’s Sake Whatever Happens Don’t Mention Brexit.

The party will decline to make up its mind about which side Labour would take in a referendum, until after an election.

If you take a deep breath and dive into the comments sections on Twitter, you will find plenty of pro-Corbyn types saying Jeremy’s solution is the only mature and sensible one.

Much as a dip into the Facebook comments on the Yorkshire Post’s page the other day revealed plenty of people saying they were “100 per cent behind Boris”. Well, better than standing in front of him, as he’d push you over that cliff without a second thought.

Corbyn’s neutrality on Brexit risks being an electoral liability for Remain-minded Labour voters. This Labour voter of many decades standing is starting to feel at best neutral about Jeremy Corbyn.

How this Brexit Fudge will sell on the doorsteps is a mystery.

Canvasser: “Are you going to vote Labour?”

Householder: “What’s your party’s position on Brexit?”

Canvasser, putting fingers in ears: “We’re not saying…”

Ahem, that’ll win them round. You can’t please all the people all of the time – but you can have a good go at pissing off as many of them as possible.

Yes, Brexit is interminable; yes, Labour MPs represent Remain and Leave voters; yes again, as Corbyn says, we are more than those labels, and there are more important, deeper matters at hand. But Brexit isn’t going to go away just because it’s an ideological inconvenience.

Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t have anything useful to say about Brexit, so he’d rather not say anything at all. At heart you suspect he backs Brexit as he probably regards he EU as a capitalist conspiracy, or something.

But his Brexit fudge doesn’t taste good to me, especially before an election in which the other parties will all take firm positions.

Just as this blog was being tapped into life, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Boris Johnson’s suspension of Parliament was illegal. As was his attempt to rule without Parliament, and his conniving of a premature election.

Parliament will now sit tomorrow, although without Prime Minister’s Questions, perhaps because Johnson doesn’t fancy answering any of those. The prorogation of Parliament always looked like an underhand Johnson plot to stop MPs debating Brexit, and now the highest court in the land agrees.

So damning is the verdict from Lady Hale and ten other justices that the next episode in the Brexit soap of WestEnders will contain calls for Boris Johnson’s resignation.

That would be a plot twist to cherish, but for now Labour should concentrate on opposing the Tories instead of sinking into a bog of internal conflict.

A week that started with an attempted assassination of deputy leader Tom Watson – a man much hated by Corbyn supporters – and then moved on to a show of hands stitch-up needs to find a better ending. But I’m not betting the house on it; and I’m not buying any of that fudge.

I’ll say this for Greta Thunberg. Youngsters massing for climate marches is more uplifting than spittle-flecked old people shouting at each other about Brexit.

And you can take that from a member of the spittle-flecked classes.

Better to side with idealistic youth than join your gnarled peers heckling from their bar-stools, even if you do still harbour doubts (some of that sour fruit dangles below).

The remarkable Swedish teenager was in New York for last week’s climate strike. According to a BBC report, 1.1m teenagers joined her on that march, while others thronged to similar protests around the world. How remarkable is that? A one-girl protest transformed into a worldwide march.

If that’s not inspirational, I don’t know what is.

Not everyone is impressed. A cursory dip in the comments sections will show how Thunberg is often attacked by men old enough to know better.

Mostly these men, and mostly they are men, brandish morally bankrupt arguments. Lines and lies deployed by the most morally bankrupt of them all, the climate-destroying can of Tango who doubles as president of the US.

Attacking a teenager with acknowledged mental health issues who just wants to make the world a better place is about as low as you can go. But is there a downside to the hurried deification of Greta Thunberg? Perhaps, if making her the figurehead allows non-believers to say she and her followers are just young and naïve. It’s also a mighty weight to place on such slight shoulders.

Yet Thunberg does speak well, saying last week, “Change is coming whether you like it or not.”

Well, yes, and my generation probably won’t like some of those changes. The Extinction Rebellion protests are spreading. Last month we happened to be in Manchester when the protesters blocked Deansgate , and it was a cheerful sight, especially the lack of cars on that busy road.

But people do need to drive and until the world changes, there will be cars, however many scruffy campsites appear on our roads.

Electric cars are slowly on the rise, but even they are attacked by the ultra-greens, as an electric car is still a car, a traffic jam of electric cars is still a traffic jam, and so on.

Electric cars also produce pollution from tyres and brake dust, apparently – and the first time I read that, in the Guardian as it happens, I thought, “Well, bloody hell you just can’t win.”

As for Extinction Rebellion, they appear to be Greta Thunberg’s hardcore uncle (or auntie), ultra-environmentalists who believe we face imminent devastation, so extreme disruption is the only answer.

This is environmental protest as a religion whose followers believe the world is going to end any day. Their gloomy predictions are so intense, you wouldn’t be surprised to open the front door next week and find nothing there. Except a skeleton holding a banner saying: “Told you so.”

More protests are planned next month, and a spin-off group says it will block Smithfield meat market in London, in protest at the environmental costs of eating meat.

Will this win people round to the cause or will it just annoy meat eaters who’d rather be left alone? A bit of both at a guess, but the annoyance may win out.

I eat veggie meals, vegan meals and meals containing fish and meat. Mostly it’s a decent diet, but I’m not in a rush to live in a world without bacon and sausages, or an occasional roast or beef stew.

Hectoring people into changing their diet can only work so far. People who quietly go about they day eating only vegan food are admirable; vegans who shout at you for eating meat are a noisy nuisance.

Would the world even be sustainable if we all gave up meat and lived off lentils (lovely things, lentils – especially with some of that bacon)?

Doubt besets us, or it does me. Is it fair to reduce young people to tears as they sob about their ruined future (the one we all ruined for them); while most climate scientists agree the world is heating up too fast, is the evidence of immediate doom as clearly written as the eco-evangelists believe?

These are questions, not answers. As Johnny Nash sang all those years ago, long before climate change had been ‘invented’, There Are More Questions Than Answers.

What links the England cricket hero Ben Stokes to a kindly plumber who works for free? Both have been splashed across the front page of The Sun on subsequent days – and a connection seems more than likely.

Yesterday the tabloid dug up a tragedy that happened in Stokes’s family before he was born. As Stokes is 28, this is by any measure an old story. He said the article dealt with “deeply personal and traumatic events” that affected his family in New Zealand more than 30 years ago.

The England cricket hero, whose family moved to Cumbria when he was 12, called The Sun’s article “immoral and heartless”. For its part, The Sun offered a traditional newspaper defence for grubbing about in the past, telling the BBC it had received the co-operation of a family member. It also said the events described were “a matter of public record”.

Was this family member paid by the newspaper? I don’t know the answer to that, but all sorts of people come crawling out of the woodwork when a tabloid waves its chequebook.

In a statement, Stokes said the story contained “serious inaccuracies which has compounded the damage caused”.

He also said: “The decision to publish these details has grave and lifelong consequences for my mum in particular. To use my name as an excuse to shatter the privacy and private lives of ­– in particular – my parents is utterly disgusting.”

The Durham and England all-rounder added: “It is hard to find words that adequately describe such low and despicable behaviour, disguised as journalism.”

The story and Stokes’s robust response set the skittles falling on Twitter. A typical Tweet came from the actor Stephen McGann: “Has that newspaper got to slander you all *personally* before you stop buying the bleeding thing?”

James Mitchinson, the editor of the Yorkshire Post, tweeted a link to an opinion piece in his newspaper. In this he takes Tony Gallagher, editor-in-chief of The Sun, to task for his decision to “torture and torment the Stokes family in an incomprehensibly inhumane way”.

The Sun’s story received a day-long Twitter lashing. Twitter isn’t the only bubble in town, but the intensity of the anger raises a key question: why did The Sun think it was worth alienating so many people for the sake of one old story?

This, after all, is the newspaper whose circulation in Liverpool was almost wiped out following its shameful reporting of the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989. That boycott has stayed strong in the city.

From the outside, the story about the Stokes family tragedy seems to be an example of poor editorial judgement. Why did no one ask that simple question: is this story worth it? Some stories are worth it; some stories are worth every ounce of effort. Other stories are lazy and unkind.

Newspapers are produced in a hurry and morals can be scattered in the rush. But that is be no excuse in this case.

David Yelland, a former editor of The Sun, said in a tweet that his old newspaper had “become pointlessly cruel and callous in recent years. We all make mistakes but the Ben Stokes story is contemptuous”.

As Stephen McGann suggested in his tweet, that contempt isn’t only directed at famous sports people: it can be turned on anyone and everyone.

Google suggests that The Sun now sells around 1.3m copies a day, around one third of the circulation from its glory days, but still a substantial figure.

While many observers despair (this ledge-bound man included), it is still a popular newspaper. But isn’t there a way for a newspaper to be popular and morally engaged in what it does?

If newspapers such as The Sun feel they can only sustain themselves through outbursts of unkindness, the long slide will only continue; won’t it?

Ah, almost forgot that philanthropic plumber. James Anderson is dubbed “the UK’s kindest plumber” by The Sun today. The paper reports that Anderson has been fixing toilets and boilers for thousands of vulnerable customers without charging them.

Doesn’t that just ring of the editor shouting out: “Someone find me a story that doesn’t make me look like such a bastard”?

The headline, by the way, takes a moment to settle – “From flusher with love.”

TO say something original about Brexit becomes harder by the day. Is there anything left? Are all insults spat out? Have the worms yet nibbled the last flesh off the bones?

On Sunday, when Boris Johnson likened himself to the Incredible Hulk, a ludicrous comparison graffitied all over the front of the Mail on Sunday, we reached a new low.

Over in Twitter-land, I pointed out that Incredible Sulk was more like it, only soon to find other great minds and seldom differing fools making the same observation.

The people’s prime minister, another label Johnson has stuck on his own frowning forehead, went to Luxembourg yesterday for a meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker – a showdown described in advance by the Sun as “the Hulk versus Le Sulk”.

When an outdoor press conference with Luxembourg’s PM, Xavier Bettel, was disrupted by a small but noisy anti-Brexit protest, the Sun’s line was flipped on its head: our hulk turned sulk, refusing to take part.

This left Bettel standing alongside an empty podium; well, at least that provided us with a new metaphor for Boris Johnson, the empty podium on legs.

In the nothing new to say world of Brexit, Bettel’s behaviour receives different reviews in today’s newspapers. The Boris Bugle (more formally known as the Daily Telegraph) has a photograph of Bettel gesturing towards the empty podium beneath the headline: “Luxembourg laughs in Johnson’s face.”

Only they weren’t laughing in his face as his face wasn’t there. You can’t laugh in the face of a man who’s scurried off and refuses to appear. Your laughter instead is directed at the vacuum left by his scuttled-off arse. That’s what Luxembourg’s prime minister did; and who can blame him?

“No wonder Britain voted to quit the EU,” the Daily Express mutters into its morning tea, making a ripple in the tepid, milky brew.

The Financial Times picks up on a social media theme. Some of us in the department of great minds and seldom differing fools had already noted that Johnson had gone from the Incredible Hulk to the Invisible Man. The FT reflects that in its headline: “Invisible Man: Johnson avoids demonstrators.”

He’s always avoiding things (Parliament, mostly) – apart from here in the north, where he persists in visiting Yorkshire, usually to be rebuffed in suitably blunt fashion.

I am sure some people in Yorkshire must like Boris Johnson (please form a queue in the nearest phone box, if you can find one). But his brand of posh stand-up politics isn’t really a good fit round here: he flaps around like a fish out of water while making piffle-waffle sounds with his open mouth.

The next stage in a show that threatens to run longer than the Mousetrap began today with the Supreme Court deliberating whether it was illegal for Boris Johnson to suspend parliament; a ruling is expected later in the week.

A last thought on yesterday’s non-appearance by Boris Johnson goes to the veteran BBC reporter John Simpson, who’s been around long enough to make telling comparisons.

Simpson tweeted: “I once watched Margaret Thatcher land in Zambia, charge down the aircraft steps in the dark into the middle of a hostile crowd & give an impromptu presser even though she’d been told people might throw acid at her.”

While I admired Thatcher not one tiny bit, on that occasion she appears to have had more balls than Johnson.

Incredible Hulk? More like the Honey Monster’s posh cousin…

Were the 1970s so awful? The Daily Mail ran one of its scare splashes the other day under the headline: “Corbyn plot to drag UK back to the 70s.”

On Twitter the writer Brian W Lavery, whose handle is “Scottish author in Hull”, offered this riposte: “Do you mean the 70s when higher education was free, foodbanks unheard of, a person could live on their wages and zero hours contracts did not exist. Oh, and parliament worked! Fire up the Tardis.”

This set me spinning in my own personal Tardis. If you ask this not so wild child, the Seventies were great – apart from the bit at the end when Margaret Thatcher was elected.

Never mind the late Baroness Hacksaw, I’d whirl back there in an instant.

For me it wasn’t about strikes or the Winter of Discontent or departing Labour prime minister Jim Callaghan dismissing the social chaos with a breezy “Crisis? What crisis?” Callaghan never said that, by the way; it was a headline in the Sun, making mischief then as now (although more effectively then than now).

No, for me the 1970s rolls on the rails of boyhood to sort of manhood (still waiting for the full version to arrive).

That decade took me roughly from 12 to 20; grammar school to university; sensible trousers to loons with bum-clinging tops and ballooning bottoms, or to jeans with flowery triangle flares sewn in by my mother; wizard T-shirts that were tight up top and with drooping sleeves; early flings and a bruise or two to the heart; youth hostels in the Lake District and warnings about under-aged drinking; Friday nights in a local pub, where the backroom was more or less the sixth-form common room.

And then there was the music. The first Knebworth Festival; seeing John Martyn at Salford University; all those gigs at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester (John Mayall, Yes, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, John McLaughlin…); the Buxton Festival, reduced in misted memory to watching Steppenwolf under plastic in the rain.

The Goldsmiths years, studying English literature, were the making or the unmaking of me, with more friends than ever. They’ve died or drifted now, some of those friends, but one keeps in touch. My great friend died 20 odd years after university, only in his early 40s: a continuing loss, but we did get to drive across America together.

That was in the 1980s, but the one before was great. Decades, you see, are personal and political, comprised of broad history and personal history. And no one can take the 1970s away from me. And, as Brian Lavery points out, the university education I had was free, supported by local authority grants. I didn’t receive a full amount and my dad declined to fully make up the difference, but I was fine, self-supported by summer jobs, including working nights in a crisp factory (main memory, apart from smelling of that night’s flavour, was eating whole potatoes dropped into the boiling fat; they emerged like a cross between a crisp and a baked potato).

Yes, whizz me back now; back to that fully crazy afro worn away by the years to shiny nothing; back to hope and dreams; back to all the great things waiting to happen; some did happen, some are still waiting, others were written in disappearing ink.

Life now is wrapped in digital complications, everything in an instant, every distraction you could want, and a few you never knew you wanted. Even a Twitter twerp like me can see that the pre-digital world had a lot going for it, especially for what became my line of work. At the end of the decade, the News of the World sold more than four million copies every Sunday, while even the Observer managed nearly a million.

Those inky days are dust, the new world has its benefits, the world in the palm of your hand and all that. But like Brian, I’d step in that Tardis right now to escape the splendid present.

Oh, look I was going to stay away from this ledge, and then the Daily Telegraph went and compared Nigel Farage to Icarus.

An opinion piece today carries the tagline: “Nigel Farage is the Brexit Icarus. Here’s how he can see us fly out of the EU to freedom…”

You might have thought a classical education would be required at the Telegraph. Even those of us without one can recall that the myth has Icarus flying too close to the sun. The wax that joins his wings melts, and Icarus takes a tumble.

The author of the opinion piece is one Hunter DuBose, who appears to be the same Hunter DuBose behind a company called Spitfire Capital that reportedly stumped up £50,000 for the crowdfunded film Brexit: The Movie (Evening Standard, March 11, 2019).

No melty wings, no precipitous plunge, just Farage flying us out of the EU on a self-serving whim. No thanks. I’d rather stick to the traditional version, in which Farage has a big a fall. Here’s hoping and praying.

Oh, look I was going to stay away from this ledge today, and then the Daily Express went and wrapped itself in an advert from the Brexit Party. I don’t know how much these adverts cost, but they won’t come cheap.

This one has a picture of Farage facing the prime minister, with the words: “Farage. My election offer to Boris.”

At the top it says: “Your favourite daily newspaper is inside.” That seems unlikely, unless there was a mix-up at the printers.

As the Express is a daily advert for the Brexit Party, this shouldn’t be a surprise. But, still – dear ratty old racist Aunty Express, have you no shame?

These things are common enough at a time when money is tight in the newspaper industry. But political wraparounds still seem dodgy.

Oh, look I was going to stay away from this ledge today, but then Andrea Leadsom… oh, just, you know, Andrea Leadsom. She popped up on the BBC to say that the Government wouldn’t be publishing any documents relating To Operation Yellowhammer, the government’s contingency plan for a no-deal Brexit, despite losing a vote on this last week.

Nope, we won’t be doing that, Leadsom told the Beeb, as it would just “concern people”. Knowing the truth would panic people, so we’ll just keep quiet, spin a few pretty lies, and keep hoping for the best, even if the evidence suggests we’ll soon be wearing a bucket of shit for a hat.

Closing scrapbook scribble …

The EU has new anti-tax avoidance rules lined up that could boost public spending – but he bad for wealthy Brexit supporters such as Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg. Is that why they’re so keen on a speedy Brexit, so that we leave before the new rules apply?

And if Brexit is an undercover tax avoidance scheme for the wealthy, how will Boris Johnson raise the money to pay for all those promises he keeps making?

Just a thought. Bye.

As Parliament is suspended for five weeks amid shouting and rowdy singing, here are a few passing thoughts. Boris Johnson’s arm movements will feature towards the end.

On the radio this morning, historian David Starkey and Baroness Helena Kennedy squabbled over the proroguing of Parliament.

Well, I say squabbled, but really Kennedy just stressed the importance of Parliament in a representative democracy. While Starkey went off on one, referred to himself a great historian, shouted ‘rubbish!” and said the will of the people mattered more than Parliament.

Like everything else, it depended on your settled view; I sided with Kennedy for her calm good sense.

The doorbell just rang. I popped downstairs but it was only David Starkey shouting “rubbish!” at me through the letterbox. I left him out there in the street.

How divided we all are nowadays. Opinions certainly split over Speaker John Bercow: a Tory often loved by Labour for his eccentric interference in government business and hated equally by his own side.

I’d say he’s a pompous little man when a pompous little man is just what’s been required; a pompous little man with big Parliamentary principles who likes the sound of his own voice and uses that voice well.

Iain Duncan Smith, Brexiteer and nose-picker general, was also on the radio this morning, lambasting Bercow as a national disgrace or something. It’s a rule in politics that anything Duncan Smith says is wrong. For a man who was such a calamitous leader of his party, he appears to think highly of himself.

Not on the radio this morning was Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

After rightly slamming the government in the Commons last night before the shutdown, he should have followed this up with a robust media appearance this morning. Instead as usual we got Barry Sheerman being annoying; this man is wheeled out every time to put the Labour position with a whine with a sneer. I’d like to have heard Corbyn, but he avoids the big interview slots – a reluctance shared with Johnson.

Corbyn did, however, speak to the TUC this morning, saying Johnson’s claim to be representing the people against Parliament was absurd. So it is, but so too is local Labour parties voting to deselect MPs in the run-up to an election. Yet this has just happened to Hull North MP Diana Johnson.

Booting out MPs who aren’t pro-JC enough is a great way to give Labour broad appeal, say me and my can of irony spray paint.

Before closing time last night, the prime minister suffered another setback – “Six votes, six defeats…” as the Guardian’s headline puts it. The latest defeat being his bid for a snap election.

Somehow, the Daily Express manages to talk up Johnson’s performance in the Commons, bellowing: “Boris blasts Brexit ‘yellow bellies’”.

The paper calls his speech ‘barnstorming’; well, it was a small barn in truth, more of a shed, and not so much a storm as a bit of a blow. Then again, the Express is famous for getting the weather wrong.

Now to those movements. Johnson gave a press conference yesterday with the Irish Taoiseach. Leo Varadkar told home truths about the reality of a hard Brexit while Johnson was forced to listen at an adjacent podium, looking uncomfortable.

Then he made exaggerated movements with his arms, flinging them out to the side, alternated with fidgeting and hair ruffling.

What was all that about? Oh, at a guess Johnson doesn’t like it when the spotlight is shining elsewhere; not happy having to stay silent when someone else speaks. He wants all the attention, all the love in the room. And there’s not much love for him right now.

Despite promises to the contrary, I still haven’t dragged myself out of the politics pit, as the sides are just too slippery.

You don’t learn much at the bottom of the Brexit pool, but I did pick up something new thanks an insult involving a piece of ginger.

After last week’s many plot twists, part of the fallout saw 21 ‘moderate Tory MPs’ (it’s a relative term) ejected from their party. One of the defenestrated was Sir Nicholas Soames, grandson of Winston Churchill. As Boris Johnson venerates Churchill, there was a clanging irony to this expulsion.

Interviewed by The Times after his removal from the party, Soames turned on Johnson, saying that his life story amounted to…

“Telling a lot of porkies about the European Union in Brussels and then becoming prime minister”.

Soames then attacked the leader of the House, Jacob Rees-Mogg, calling him an “absolute fraud”. Rather splendidly, Soames said JRM was…

“A living example of what a moderately cut double-breasted suit and a decent tie can do with an ultra-posh voice and a bit of ginger struck up his arse”.

I understood this insult until the rectally inserted spicy root. My befuddlement was shared by others on Twitter – and then someone came up with the answer. This happens often and suggests there is more to Twitter than passing on insults and being smart; although, to be fair, the rudeness is the main attraction.

“Ginger stuck up his arse” is an insult linked to the equine world; Soames was being horsey rude, if you like. When raw ginger or other irritants are inserted in this unkind way, a horse will carry its tail high, making it appear livelier or younger than is the case.

Once you know this, you can appreciate the insult. As, yes, Rees-Mogg does carry on as if his arse has been super-charged with a stick of ginger – also as if someone made a bonfire in his mouth with an 18^th century dictionary.

The phrase to “ginger up” comes from the same misuse of the root on a horse’s arse; also linked indirectly is “ginger group”, defined by Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable as: “A small group of people whose object is to stir the more passive majority into activity, especially in politics. The allusion is to the spice…”

There is a theme here, if you wish to follow, as we were all gingered up with assorted Euro-myths and wilful misunderstandings (aka blatant lies) before the EU referendum.

By the way, Nigel Farage – a lead member of the Spice Churls – carries on as if he has two sticks of ginger and a whole packet of Ginger Nuts shoved up his behind; but I digress and will almost certainly do so again, for what else is there?

Incidentally, saying someone has a “poker up their arse” generally means they are being inflexible or perhaps humourless.

Rather more sombrely, another inappropriate use of a poker, red hot in this instance, is said to have seen off King Edward II in 1327. That is certainly how the king dies in Marlowe’s play of the same name; a gruesome departure that stays in my mind from a production years ago at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.

Historians do not in fact agree over whether Edward II was murdered with a red-hot poker; some maintain he died later in Italy.

With regards to Brexit, Leave or Remain, that has shoved a red-hot poker up all our arses.

I will drag myself out of this politics pit someday soon, but there is just so much going on down here.

Two trains of thought this morning…

ONE: Are referendums bad for democracy (Jacob Rees-Mogg probably insists on referenda as the plural form, but we not having any of that around here)?

TWO: Is Jeremy Corbyn really ‘chicken’ for voting against an election?

Anyone in a hurry can take it that the answers are, in order, yes and no.

On the BBC Today programme just now, a member of the public was asked how he would vote in a general election. His answer was that he wouldn’t be voting as he voted in the EU referendum and Brexit hadn’t happened yet – so there was no point in voting in an election.

A snapshot view, but others will doubtless feel the same. If holding referendums puts people off voting in general elections, then it could be said that such one-off opinion polls are bad for democracy.

At present we are up to our knees in a post-referendum shit swamp. The trouble with referendums is that they address a complex question with a simple binary question: is this good or bad, right or wrong? Yes/no and that’s that, we’re done. Except of course we’re not. We’ve only started down a long road into the quagmire.

Governments often hold referendums for tactical reasons, as David Cameron did when he promised an advisory referendum on our membership of the EU. His plan was to settle the Europe issue for once and all, see off the ‘fruitcake’ politics of Nigel Farage, and stop the Tories arguing about Europe.

What a marvellous calculation that turned out to be.

Now democracy is a battered football, kicked from one end of the room to the other. The Brexiteers see one referendum as the only democracy that matters, while anyone pining for the boring old parliamentary democracy of debates and votes is shouted down.

So, yes, referendums are basically bad for the fuller version of democracy.

And another problem with referendums such as the one we held is that the vote was too close to count – and that created all the problems we now see. A small majority voted on a turnout of 72.2%; a swirling shitstorm blew up, and it’s blowing still.

And yet, boring old-style democracy has this week seen Boris Johnson face three defeats in his first battle as prime minister, including his call for a snap October election being rebuffed by Labour.

According to the right-wing newspapers this morning, Jeremy Corbyn is ‘chicken’ for turning down the chance to fight an election. The Sun even turns Corbyn into a chicken, while the Telegraph (aka Boris Johnson’s PR campaign) bellows that Corbyn is a ‘hypocrite’ for voting against an election.

An easy accusation to level, as the Labour leader has been chuntering on about an election for ages.

But Corbyn isn’t chicken – that’s just the line being brandished by the Johnson crew. The timing of the election is deeply political and both sides want a date that plays well.

Johnson wants an election before the Brexit deadline of October 31; Corbyn wants to concentrate on Brexit and wait until November. Johnson wants to make an election all about Brexit; Corbyn wants to hold off so that during a campaign he can say that Johnson failed to deliver Brexit.

Not wanting an election when Tantrum Johnson demands one isn’t chicken – it’s just political gamesmanship, as played by both sides.

But there are barbed ironies here. Johnson is fulminating because he can’t have an election he swears he doesn’t want; and Corbyn is adamant he doesn’t want the election he has always demanded (or not right now at least).

Still, Corbyn isn’t chicken, he’s just refusing to play the game under Johnson’s rules.

One final irony: Johnson suspending parliament could stymie his attempts to win a vote to have an election, as time could run out. Would serve him right though, as he set that anti-democratic timebomb ticking.