The drink law reforms are the subject of much hypocrisy – the Tories are moaning about drunks and opposing removing regulatory restrictions on free enterprise, Labour is de-regulating for a free market in a way that will permit more anti-social behaviour. The Lib Dem’s Charles Kennedy seems strangely absent from the debate. LibDem policy is to allow alco-pops for 16 year olds (and their European leader, Chris Davies MEP, would throw in a spliff, a few E’s and line of cocaine no doubt).

The Basher Davis camp likes to make snide hints about David Cameron’s £27,000-a-year from a chain of bars when it isn’t alluding to Ken Clarke’s proselytising for fag exports to the third world at British American Tobacco. (Though no one has yet mentioned Basher’s time as a director at Tate & Lyle, which was the recipient of £127m in EU sugar subsidies last year at the expense of tax-payers and third world sugar exporters).

Sean Gabb, the maverick libertarian propagandist, quotes Dr Magee, the Bishop of Peterborough, who in the debates over the 1872 Licensing Act said, “England free better than England sober”. Guido will drink to that!