Many Mansions

Congratulations to Newsnight on putting up Irwin Stelzer and Denis MacShane, both of the Henry Jackson Society (all other nominal affiliations, such as MacShane's Labour Party membership, being neither here nor there), to discuss the Mansion House speech. Isn't balance wonderful?

There will be a lot more of this while the old, ostensibly separate parties remain nominally in existence, not least due to the failure of the media to report their tiny and elderly membership, the very high proportion their members either in receipt of councillors' allowances or married to people who are, the tiny numbers involved in picking the MPs for safe (i.e., most) seats, and the laughably small percentages of the eligible vote that the parties now secure. But people do now seem to be working these out for themselves.

MacShane managed to accuse only the Tories of being opposed to the EU (and, for that matter, only the Hard Left of being opposed to American hegemony) without Paxo, the alleged Grand Inquisitor, picking him up at all. That, despite the previous report's having contained a brief exchange with the Old Labour Eurosceptic MP, Eric Ilsley, expressing his fear that there was now a "special relationship" between the US and not Britain, but the EU. There always has been, Eric. There always has been. Just ask the Henry Jackson Society. Still, it looks as if another golden penny is also dropping at last.

Stelzer was perturbed at Gordon Brown's suggestion that Britain might have any important bilateral relationship other than with the United States. So, dear readers, with where might such a relationship be, and why?