For all its faults and imperfections, politics is still, above all else, the noble art of conflict resolution. It is about finding whatever it is that unites, not divides. And what, in this febrile hour, must unite them all is that something, somewhere along the line has gone badly wrong when the transcendent voice of reason should belong to Mark Francois MP. Who could possibly disagree with that? Not even Mark Francois himself.
In his genteel Essex cockney twang, which would perhaps be more loved had he not lived in such divisive times, he spoke of “my friend, my best friend”, the murdered MP David Amess. Murdered by an Islamist extremist, “who told his trial that he did it because of how David voted in the House of Commons”.