Know Your Enemy

"Whenever an elite is unjust, anywhere in the world, from apartheid South Africa to military Chile or patriarchal Saudi Arabia, it's always been the Conservative Party that has bravely fought them by selling them weapons and inviting their leaders to dinner."

It didn't really need Mark Steel to point out that a Tory prime minister taking aim at "the elite" is just a mite hypocritical - but then he's done so with such deliciously savage sarcasm that we should be applauding.

Meanwhile, Mhairi Black has written a piece for the National condemning the "ugly and downright scary rhetoric" of the Tory Party conference: "The Conservative Party's mask as 'a party of the common people' has slipped to reveal the xenophobic, often racist, nationalist, ugly face beneath". Black's article echoed a joint statement by the leaders of her party, Plaid and the Green Party that lambasted the Tories for "the most toxic rhetoric on immigration we have seen from any government in living memory".

Little wonder, then, that Scarfolk Council have issued a cease and desist letter to the government accusing them of stealing their policies. Not that May, Amber Rudd and company are likely to be concerned - on the contrary, they're likely to take further "inspiration" from the council's proposed foreigner identification badges.