Matthew Tempest in the Guardian and Rosemary Bennet in The Times yesterday made Guido laugh with a very silly, implausible story about Bernard Jenkin and Edward Leigh throwing their hat into the ring that is the Tory leadership race. They are both members of the new Cornerstone ginger-group of socially-conservative throwbacks.

Bernard Jenkin is widely recognised as a vain idiot throughout the parliamentary Tory party, and that is really saying something. How he could be the flag-bearer for traditional right-wing values escapes Guido – he voted for legalising gay marriages, as well as to reduce the age at which buggery and other homosexual acts were permitted from 18 to 16. (“Buggery” is the legal term in the Act.) Guido reckons he will not be able to count on Anne Widdicombe’s vote.

Edward Leigh recently published Faith, Flag and Family – a call for a Conservatism that backed traditional values and protectionism. Edward Leigh is no idiot, though his unfortunate appearance can be deceptive, he is however a man in the wrong century, belonging in the 19th Century when Tory landowners last campaigned against liberalism and free trade.

The Cornerstone chumps are the same lot whose junior members wrote to the Sextator a why-oh-why letter complaining about Britain going to the dogs, everyone boozing and fornicating – “…them Muslim’s have got a point, we’re decadent we is…” They of course wrote of their concerns to Boris Johnson!?