Dearest Gentle Reader, this very Thursday has delivered a political pantomime so perfectly constructed one suspects the actors rehearsed it. Lady Reeves endorses the man expected to demote her, Lord Trump delivers a verdict so magnificently unhelpful it proves his opponent's point entirely, and somewhere in North Britain, an entire nation squints at a statistical table with the expression of a person who has been here before and knows precisely how it ends - yet cannot quite bring themselves to look away.