If our leaders won’t lead, we must vote again on Brexit

It would be better that MPs spoke up about the folly of leaving. But if none of them will, a second referendum is required

I recently met several people who said they were beginning to feel sorry for Theresa May. Well, up to a point, I should have thought. She apparently wanted to be prime minister from an early age, and is now a victim of what her predecessor from the late 1950s and early 1960s, Harold Macmillan, referred to as "events".

Macmillan's celebrated remark about "events" has gone down in political history. But, as with so many famous sayings, its full meaning has been lost. When asked what he feared most, he replied "the opposition of events, dear boy". This was a clever dig at the weakness of the Labour party in the 1950s, which was riven with deep resentment between the Gaitskellites and the Bevanites. Macmillan was not fearful of Her Majesty's Opposition.

The apparent agreement between the US and EU to defuse Trump's tariff wars shows the benefit of being part of a bloc

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