REPORTER: Yes. Well. Where are you on the issues that matter most, issues about contraception, women priests?

Actually, the great thing that if he does get the job, his real appointments will probably be even weirder than the ones I've just made up. It's why I'm hoping the Indie's prospective buyer Alexander Lebedev isn't put off by the Stop Rod Liddle campaign which has been launched on Facebook and on . The only thing crazier than buying an ailing newspaper when print circulations are in freefall would be not to give the job to the one man on earth who could possibly save it.

[A]s Douglas Alexander pointed out, the history of the Labour Party after electoral rejection does not inspire confidence. In 1931, 1951 and 1979, Labour responded to defeat by turning in on ourselves, forming a circular firing squad so devastatingly effective that it took a decade and a half before the survivors were able to lead the Labour Party back into government.

34 large, very thin slices of air-dried ham (about 50g), such as prosciutto

But the urgent battle is ideological. David Cameron's Government is split in two on foreign affairs. The most powerful faction are the resurgent neo-conservatives: Fox, Gove and Chancellor George Osborne. They have never accepted that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, and retain the strongest links to the US Republicans. These neocons believe that they have captured David Cameron, and that Hague is the remaining obstacle to a return to the interventionist foreign policy of the Blair years. They have influential allies in the press, many of whom have been responsible for the most unfair attacks on the Foreign Secretary.