Last night the US Electoral College formally elected Joe Biden as President Elect. One passage of his acceptance speech made Guido’s ears prick up. In 1987, Joe Biden dropped out of the Presidential primaries after a plagiarism scandal following a speech where he lifted the words of Neil Kinnock. Last night instead he copied Kinnock’s nemesis – Margaret Thatcher by quoting the words of St Francis of Assisi. Thatcher famously quoted the same passage upon the morning of her election. Now Biden is doing the same upon his.

Guido hopes perhaps he can learn from Maggie’s policy not just her choice of quotes. He did, after all, table a resolution to formally back her in the Falklands war while the White House equivocated…