The Madness of King Brexit

Answering an emergency call, a fireman in Cambridgeshire took a roundabout too fast and his engine toppled over, killing a pedestrian. Unbelievably, he told the court he would drive the same way again if he had to do it again. No, Mr Fireman! If you had to do it again, I hope you would have learnt to approach the roundabout a little slower, and not topple your machine and kill someone.

The new Air Boeing 737 is fitted with a new "safety device" that causes the plane to dive if it detects a stall condition. Unfortunately, it cannot be over-ridden by the pilot even when they're flying the plane manually. Last month, a malfunctioning sensor on an Indonesian Boeing 737 caused the plane to dive into the ground killing all 189 people on board. Surprisingly, Boeing neglected to tell pilots about this new system, or how to switch it off. Please Boeing, teach your pilots how to take over manual control again if there is a system problem; I actually trust them to cope better than a failing robot.

In Britain, we have our own madness of King Brexit. Theresa May, having squandered her majority, is floundering under the weight of a situation of her own making, and impossible to resolve. In Brussels, the ambassadors of 27 nations assembled to read the new Brexit agreement, only to be told it hadn't been agreed by the British Cabinet yet, let alone Parliament, so they all went home again. Once, as in so much else, we led the world in diplomacy. Now we lead the world in dopelunacy. May is like the Grand Old Duke of York - she keeps leading everyone up the hill, then down again, until no one knows which way they're going. Never in the field of human affairs have so many owed so much trouble to so few.