Brexit update

telegraph.co.uk/ brexitbulletin

Atlantic, the enemy isn’t wrong but evil, and you don’t do deals with the devil. Our ideological opponents are carriers of infectious moral superbugs, and any contact risks contamination and subsequent quarantine for the immunity of the herd.

My larger point has implications for not only our two countries, but for the world. However ostensibly out of touch, Joe Biden is the only genuinely centrist Democratic candidate in a sea of the Left, lefter, and leftest – on abundant display during last week’s primary debates (in which Biden made a dishearteningly lacklustre showing). No doubt to younger activists yesterday’s man is fusty and unexciting. Frankly, the guy doesn’t do all that much for me, either. But it would be a deadly mistake for Democrats to get so caught up in competing over which candidate can out-woke all the others that they take their eyes off the prize. History is strewn with nominees whose names we can’t recall. We remember presidents.

Self-identified moderates constitute more than a third of American voters. A fair number of these folks are uncomfortable with Trump’s brashness, crassness, and impulsivity. Dumpy Joe Biden might make voters who are uneasy with Trump’s erratic, abrasive style feel safe. Obama’s vice-president dangles the tantalising prospect of returning to the civility in public life that Biden misses, as do any number of Americans like me.

So far, it appears that the Democratic front-runner has weathered what never should have been a storm. But Biden doesn’t always look before he leaps, and this is unlikely to be his last perceived failure to meet the stringent ideological litmus test of the American Left. It’s all too easy to imagine Biden being taken down by indignant activists whose delicate sensibilities he has unpardonably offended.

I don’t want Donald Trump re-elected. Biden may be just saleable to the American middle ground. But should the Democratic Party give in to a prissy progressive purism, all those holier-than-thou candidates will be kicking themselves in their immaculate behinds for four more very long years.