Hello again everyone and apologies about being on hiatus the last 2 week, I was on holiday without access to a laptop, which is presumably the same sort of expression that I imagine the Americans will use to describe Julian Assange's extradition to the US ("on holiday without a laptop") before he mysteriously disappears. On the other hand, it's not as if we missed much, it was mostly another two weeks of procrastination as Westminster sat around doing nothing before I arrived home and they decided to agree to holding a December election.

The Brexit deadlock, October edition, saw Boris achieve the impossible task, no not that of a sensible haircut, but that of getting a much better deal than anyone hoped for. Then it was of course voted out by the MPs because at this stage they've backed themselves into a corner where they'd only rubber stamp a Brexit deal if it ignored the referendum and committed to full European integration. No matter how sweet the deal Boris was able to get, it was always going to bombed more than the RAF over Dresden.

And so finally with Brexit stalemate metaphors running low the MPs have finally decided to toss the dice at an election in December with the outcome almost certainly decided by how many people the Brexit Party put up and whether the public vote tactically. There's a lot of talk about the Leave vote being split but frankly if MPs are as keen as they've been to defy their party, is there any Brexit-related difference between a pro-Remain conservative winning his seat vs is being won by the opposition. In all honesty I think the main story in the whole shambles has been that 50 or so MPs are stepping down. And many of them got about as much say in their removal from office as JFK did.