My colleague David Pryce-Jones tells a story I love — I forget the year, unfortunately. And I can’t call David at the moment, because it’s 5 in the morning in London. But, one year, the Conservatives pulled off an upset over Labour. There was a party at some establishment, with the literary set. Kingsley Amis got up on a table and danced, with a rose in his mouth. Ken Tynan sat silent and glum. Amis said, “Show the shaggers, show the shaggers. Five more years outside the barbed wire.”
I will not talk of barbed wire. I will say merely that Massachusetts today showed that America is not quite ready for social democracy — not yet. Sweden will not arrive tomorrow. Maybe the next day. But not tomorrow, and that is heartening.
Good night.