In a 1940 essay, George Orwell made a number of what I think were some astute observations about the qualities of the English ruling class. He saw them as patriotic but “impenetrably stupid”. / “What is to be expected of them is not treachery or physical cowardice, but stupidity, unconscious sabotage, an infallible instinct for doing the wrong thing.”

The men behind Trussonomics and Brexit, the two great man-made catastrophes of recent years, are to be honoured for their ‘great work’.