The Tory leadership election. Smile? No, surely not.  With May, Leadsom, Gove of Cawdor and Crabb out there.

I did manage a smile recently when a friend compared Sarah Vine, wife to Michael Gove, to Lady Macbeth. But Michael has already all but departed the play.

Theresa May at least has a track record, but the notion of putting our future, our future in Europe and our future in the world, in the hands of someone with as little experience yet so shrill and sure of herself as Andrea Leadsom is … daft is the word that comes to mind.

I read that ‘(Leadsom’s) pitch for the job was about social justice and cracking down on corporate greed’. She’s been part of government that has put deficit reduction before social justice, and turned a blind eye to corporate greed….

I don’t of course have a vote. Though I have wondered about joining the party. I think with a haircut and a flower in my lapel I just might pass muster.

I have in the past attended Tory party functions, and even won a pashmina shawl in a raffle. (No, it didn’t suit me, in case you wondered.)

The story that I was an anarchist fifth-columnist is a lie.

I’ve been thinking there was little left in this unholy mess to amuse, but then along came Ken Clarke, caught off the record by Sky TV. If Ken Clarke can be a member of the party, why, for heaven’s sake, not me?

‘I think with Michael [Gove] as prime minister we’d go to war with at least three countries at once…He did us all a favour by getting rid of Boris. The idea of Boris as prime minister is ridiculous.’

‘I don’t think either Andrea Leadsom or Boris Johnson actually are in favour of leaving the European Union.  (Malcolm Rifkind: ‘Well I don’t think they even cared very much either way.’)  …. She is not one of the tiny band of lunatics who think we can have a sort of glorious economic future outside the single market…. So long as she understands that she’s not to deliver on some of the extremely stupid things she’s been saying.’

‘Theresa (May) is a bloody difficult woman but you and I worked with Margaret Thatcher (laughs) …I get on all right with her … and she is good… She’s been at the Home Office far too long, so I only know in detail what her views are on the Home Office …She doesn’t know much about foreign affairs.’