Oh, propriety, says Mrs Benjamin. We're always so concerned with propriety. Even in total madness, we still stick to our hierarchies and chains of command.

I learned very early on not to speak to my folk from on high, but to get down with them, beside them, showing them how to act rather than telling them. And I suggested that they should do the same with one another: that they didn't need a book of rules to tell them what to do and what not to do, but experience and action.

Voters might have short memories. Politicians do not.

We all reconstruct our past because we wish to see how our present came to be our present - do we not?