Yesterday I listened to one of those dreadful Five Live radio ‘phone-in programmes asking people to ring in and say what they thought about David Cameron as the new Tory leader. The whole level of discussion reminded me of the scene from the West Wing, when President Jed Bartlet describes a similar experience:

“I was watching a television program before, with a kind of roving moderator who spoke to a seated panel of young women who were having some sort of problem with their boyfriends - apparently, because the boyfriends had all slept with the girlfriends' mothers. And they brought the boyfriends out, and they fought, right there on television. Toby, tell me: these people don't vote, do they?”