Avisa Partners is a Brussels lobbying firm which claims to be different: “we insist on telling the truth”, “Lawyers respect us for what we do and how we do it”. Well one of their partners has spent a lot of time with lawyers before he went to jail for fraud. Guido would dispute that Denis Macshane insists on telling the truth, now or then.

His resume understandably glosses over his period served at Her Majesty’s Pleasure and focuses on his time as Her Majesty’s Minister for Europe. What caught Guido’s eye was the claim that MacShane coined the term “Brexit”Odd that these experts do not know that it is generally accepted that in 2012 Ebrahim Rahbari, an economist at Citigroup, coined the term “Grexit” to refer to the potential Greek exit from the €uro. “Brexit” came into circulation immediately afterwards. Guido would be keen to see evidence that Denis made prior use of the term. Have emailed MacShane, as yet, to no avail…