Peter Rhodes: Another Brexit, 500 years ago

A READER asks why I've had nothing to say about the Tories' victory in last week's Copeland by-election. To be honest, I've been waiting for my sternest troll, Mr Glum, to explain how Copeland was actually a thundering success for Labour and a massive endorsement of Corbynism. Still waiting.

HOWEVER, be very wary of writing off the Labour Party just yet. After Tony Blair's landslide of 1997, plenty of pundits thought the Conservative Party was irrelevant, outdated and destined for that famous receptacle, the dustbin of history. Not so.

AND while so many commentators bang on about "toxic Corbyn," few of them highlight the quiet appeal of Theresa May. She voted to stay in the EU but is now pushing ahead with Brexit because that is what the people wanted. You don't often meet a politician like that and I suspect the Tories under May won a by-election at Copeland that the Tories under Cameron would have lost.

MEANWHILE, on the Sunday programme (Radio 4) Roy Hattersley made a neat comparison between Brexit and Henry VIII's Reformation nearly 500 years ago. He recalls that King Henry was irritated by the Pope, dissatisfied with the deal he was getting from Europe and was ruling over an insular race who "consider ourselves better on our own."

IN a column for Waitrose magazine, John Humphrys refers to a "hilarious exchange" between President Trump and Humphrys' old BBC colleague John Sopel. In truth, it was not so much hilarious as shot through with cold contempt on both sides. Sopel and Trump clearly have no time for each other.

CONTRAST Sopel's attitude to Trump with his approach to Barack Obama, as captured in the countdown sequence of film clips before the BBC World News. Every pore of the journalist's body oozes admiration and respect. It can be hard to hide your feelings but it really is no part of a journalist's job to pick sides. Trump may be a pain but he's America's pain, duly elected by what passes for a majority in the US system, and deserving of a little respect, not for himself but for the office of President and for the 325,655,415 (as of last month) people he represents.

THE Sopel incident reminds me of an interview I had with Gerry Adams shortly after the IRA ceasefire of 1995. We were face-to-face for three hours over lunch at his publisher's office in London. When I got back to the office and wrote the piece, one of the secretaries exclaimed: "I'd have spat in his face!" And what would that have achieved, precisely, apart from me virtue-signalling my distaste for Adams? If you can't ask the questions and get the answers in a civil manner, you're in the wrong job.

THE wind doth blow, my broadband doth drop out and BT, true to form, doth say there is no fault on the line and if I summon an engineer it may cost me £120. Customer care at its finest.

AND they're not doing much for the English language either. The BT website asks if we wish to update our passwords. We can click boxes marked "yes" or "nope". Grrrr.