Sounds Shakespearian. The House of Lancaster hath fallen. Whereas in fact, its just another rugby manager losing his job. There’s only two options for national team managers at a World Cup. You either win the competition, like Clive Woodward did in 2003, and retire from the game, take a knighthood, become a legend and follow a lucrative career as a pundit. Or you fail to win, like Stuart Lancaster, get sacked, become a legend and follow a lucrative career as a pundit. There’s always a shortage of pundits. Like there’s a shortage of traffic wardens.

So Lancaster had to go. Win or lose, you have to go. If you win because you know you will never win it again, should you live to be 150. And if you lose because the World Cup is the defining moment of rugby, the aspiration, the dream. I think that rather than agonise over replacement managers it would be a far more positive move to simply ban Southern Hemisphere teams from the tournament until they… errrr… until they move north or learn to play more fairly. By giving others a chance.

And Jeremy Corbyn met the Queen yesterday, to accept his entry, as leader of the Labour Party, into Her Majesty’s Privy Council. Must have been a dream come true. She’s always dreamt of meeting the staunch Republican, anti-royalist Trotskyite lower-class scumbag and there he was, refusing to kneel before her, as he kissed her ring. A phrase that itself needs some elaboration to avoid some horrible images springing to mind.

Membership of the privy council entitles Corbyn to have access to all manner of state secrets. Just what you want of a man who counts Hamas, Hezbollah, the IRA and numerous other terrorist organisations as his ‘mates’.

Corbyn’s USP was that he holds very strong views, most of which any normal or sensible person would whole-heartedly find ignorant, stupid or just wrong, but heh, they’re his views, not ours. And that he was ‘honest’ about them, which he had been. His ‘honest politician’ persona got him elected. A man of principle. Who refused to sing God Save the Queen when first elected. Yet on Sunday at the Remembrance Service, he managed to remember the words, albeit in a very half-hearted way.

So already, after just a couple of months, Corbyn is no longer so ‘true to his long-held views’ but instead, he’s yielding to the weight of public expectation. First he sings the anthem, then he bows before Her Maj, what next? 2 Jags? An affair with Ryan Giggs’ wife? A new tattoo??

He’s blowing in the wind, like they all do. Bob Dylan was right. Even though he never knew Corbyn. And never wanted to.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx