And one more, absurdity that is, along similar lines to my last post:

Listening to two Tory MPs on Radio 4 debating the BBC (there’s a White Paper on the BBC about to be published):

one MP recognising that the BBC is much-loved and works well as it is –  we’ve all misgivings, but we can be proud …

and the other arguing that it would do much better in the private sector, as a subscription channel, and there it could do so much more. Precisely what I wondered, and how would it in the end differ from Sky?

An example of the kind of private-sector lunacy which affects and afflicts the Tory right.

They’ve a doctrinaire fear of the state, a ‘we’re all disciples of Hayek now’ mentality, a libertarian impulse which misreads history, scorns the role of the state and government, fails to recognise how state and enterprise can work together (and have done so remarkably over the last two hundred years) – and in the event disregards what the ordinary person wants.

It’s a perverse form of elitism. It’s a fetish, a dogma, which also infects the EU debate, a shadow agenda hiding behind the issues of immigration and sovereignty.