The lady's for turning

The problem with describing yourself as capable of providing "strong and stable" leadership of the country is that you then have to live up to it - as Theresa May is now finding out to her cost.

As Andrew Neil pointed out to her on the day that she performed a U-turn on the so-called "dementia tax" but then vigorously denied having done so, the enormous lead in the polls that she enjoyed relatively recently - the lead she was hoping to use to embarrass Jeremy Corbyn and, in the words of the Daily Mail, "crush the saboteurs" - has been whittled down to very little. For someone very much left of centre like myself, it's extremely encouraging to see her floundering so badly in the face of questions from an interviewer naturally disposed to look favourably on Tories.

There's some way to go yet, of course, but suddenly backing a party other than the Conservatives is looking like much less of a lost cause; on the contrary, it's May and her cronies who are increasingly all at sea.