Parris at his best

Another palpable bullseye from Parris today in The Times.

This in particular is brilliant.

This combination of stubbornness and vacillation is getting to look really creepy. Here is a chicken that flaps into the middle of the road, half thinks better of it, then, paralysed by a kind of furious vexation, stands his ground in the face of the oncoming truck. Winston Churchill once described Stanley Baldwin's Cabinet as “resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity and all powerful for impotence”. Speaking at the Mansion House in 2004, Mr Brown, then Chancellor, quoted the remark. Interesting that it had impressed itself on his mind. I remember thinking at the time that this insight went a mite close to home.