Britain is experiencing the Age of the Amateur. Qualified experts, specialists, practitioners operating within established, well-regulated trades; these professionals have had their day. True integrity and nous belong to the volunteer, the have-a-go hero. At least, this seems to be the accepted wisdom of the Cameroons. And the result is...

"Vous verrez, Antoine; dans quelques années ils feront comme si je n'avais jamais existé..." (You'll see, Antoine; in a few years they'll act as if I never existed...") remarks the dying President Mitterrand to his idealistic young biographer in the Robert Guédiguian film Le Promeneur du Champs de Mars.

When David Cameron flew out to Asia last week, he did so on a Boeing 474 owned by Sonangol, the Angolan state oil company. Anyone minded to spot a narrative in these things might have called it a sign of the times; an embattled Prime Minister traveling East - on...

In his 1994 Labour conference speech, Tony Blair gambled his young leadership on a bid to abandon the party's constitutional commitment to state ownership. The gamble met with resounding approval. As one MP put it, as he made his case you could "hear the sound of pennies dropping."
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