Amid the debris of our polity, we are grateful to attorney general Geoffrey Cox QC MP (pictured) for inadvertently lightening the mood at Obiter Towers. You may have seen his brisk one-word response to Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow’s tweet that Cox had been ‘told to find a way’ to ensure legal validation of Theresa May’s newly negotiated agreement with the EU. 

This gave rise to a headline combination for the ages from venerable news agency the Press Association. It read simply:

POLITICS: Cox/bollocks.

Well – quite.

Not to be intimidated, Snow retorted thus: ‘I’m beginning to suspect that the Attorney General’s use of the word “bollocks” in response to my earlier tweet means “you are right, but damn you for revealing it to everyone”!’

Mmm. One can understand the AG’s annoyance, in retrospect – after all, he didn’t come across for the PM in the end, did he? And the Daily Mirror’s political honcho Kevin Maguire was not alone in tweeting an arresting take on that outcome: ‘World would be a little safer had Labour A-G Peter Goldsmith proved as consistent as Geoffrey Cox instead of revising his Iraq War legal advice. Cox knew his would be public, Goldsmith thought his private.’

 

 

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