You get the impression Adam Afriyie knows what is coming reading his begging letter to colleagues ahead of Friday’s vote on the Wharton bill. He has a point when he underlines – literally – how this is the last the chance to hold a referendum this parliament, a Tory majority post-2015 isn’t exactly odds-on so the government’s route to a referendum is hardly convincing. As he says, “we have been hamstrung by the LibDems in Coalition”.

Guido has knocked Adam in the past for his terrible media strategy, his inability to build support for his amendment and his cack-handed and now still-born leadership campaign. Guido is however sympathetic to Afriyie’s argument, it just has no chance of success and he should have tried to build support for the argument before advancing the amendment…