Commons to vote on Brexit deal and history unlikely to be kind to this Comedy of Errors

Time, relentless, inescapable time, eventually offers a perspective that can withstand the most one-eyed hijacking of how the past is recorded and offered as a roadmap to the future.

Events and proposals that once seemed plausible, like the 1960s advice to hide under a table in the event of a Red Commie nuclear attack, can seem more comic than real — or at least that may be how we try to shrug off the stupidities of the past in the hope (usually forlorn) that we are not as naive in how we confront our own challenges.