Readers of this blog must be wondering where I’ve got to. Real devotees will realise that I’ve been very much tied up with http://surbitonhillcllr.com and some may even have spotted me on Ellerton and Bond Road.

I must say that I had hoped that by now we would have had the general election the country is crying out for. In all my years in politics (back to the Macmillan era) I’ve never known a government – or a Parliament! – that needed to be put to sleep more than this one. Both lack moral authority and credibility, are turning the country I love into a laughing stock, undermining its institutions and leading us sleepwalking into a federalist Europe, having broken faith with us over a Referendum on Lisbon. And spare us the casuistry about Lisbon not being the Constitution – as a document it may lack the baroque flourishes of Giscard D’Estaing’s original but it is the same thing in all essentials as the Constitution.

Autumn is a sad time with leaves falling from trees, exposing the stark reality underneath. But it is also a time of promise of new leaves and new growth to come in the Spring. Let us hope that the metaphor is good for this government and that the people of Britain will see the stark reality of its ugly cluelessness and despatch it to the oblivion it has shunned for far too long.