Careful thought and scrutiny should be essential to good government. It requires an open mind and an understanding that many issues are by their nature complex and require widespread consultation. Politics now regrettably demands total loyalty, partisanship and manipulation, rather than truth and reason.

This is an editing of an idea expressed by Rory Stewart, when he was first appointed as a Minister by David Cameron and found to his apparent shock that his Secretary of State was Liz Truss.

It seems so apt a description of current political management of Mortlake matters.