Well, knock me down with a Christmas pudding! William Hague has chosen what is virtually Christmas Eve to tell elderly, Tory and EU-wary readers of the Daily Telegraph that he plans to vote for Britain to stay in the European Union when the great day comes. Many will be baffled, then quite cross.
I’m a bit baffled too, astonished on two grounds.
One reason is that Hague has made hostility to the EU a central pillar of his political career, which famously started when he lectured Margaret Thatcher from the podium at the 1977 Tory conference when the precocious brat was just 16.
He is to blame as much as anyone for the political pickle into which the Tory party has led itself and the country today – a perilous “renegotiation” with 27 EU partners who have more pressing problems of their own, followed by a Brexit referendum in which anything might happen.
