David Owen has launched a surprise attack on Obama’s planned pre-referendum visit, warning “as emotions mount in our referendum debate it would be better for the President to respect diplomatic courtesies and democratic conventions”. Quite.

“Mr President, before you tell us how to vote, please recognise that some of us are determined, if  and when outside the EU, to further expand our trade from EU markets,  as we are doing already, but much faster to the rest of the world, achieve greater economic growth and improve our productivity. We intend to restore cuts in our worldwide presence and return to blue water diplomacy. With savings from the pretence of EU ‘common defence’ we intend to focus the UK’s defence effort on ‘hard’ defence within NATO. We are convinced we must learn from the mistakes our politicians and senior military figures made in the aftermath of the invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.”

The zeal of the convert…