When Boris Johnson’s resignation from parliament was announced, we were in the audience for Glyndebourne’s production of Don Giovanni. Controversially, this includes a vast cake which is part of the bacchanals and then reappears, in rotting form, as the statue of the Commendatore approaches to take the antihero to his eternal damnation. Don Giovanni sprawls in the gap left by the removal of a giant slice, cramming putrescent crumbs into his mouth and necking a bottle. The news must have given great satisfaction to the director because the production’s take on the opera is, as the programme knowingly explains, the problem of ‘trying to have your cake and eat it’. Don G equals Boris. Mozart himself was against Brexit! I can see the attractions of the comparison, but the situations of the wicked Don and Big Dog are not analogous. Giovanni faces the fires of Hell. Boris was merely announcing that he would not now be seeking re-endorsement from the voters of Uxbridge and South Ruislip. I am not positively predicting that he will find a way back, merely pointing out that he remains free to do so. It is too early to say he will have no more cakes and ale.

One feels sorry for Nadine Dorries that she was denied the peerage she was led to expect, but one should not look at a seat in the Lords as a right, except for ex officio positions such as the Earl Marshal. Even the existence of HOLAC, the advisory body on new peers, does not alter the fact that life peerages are given through patronage. The monarch confers them, but the prime minister decides who gets them. So long as the second chamber is not elected, this is the way it should be. It would be much more corrupt for a standing body of platonic guardians to decide who should be our new legislators than for whoever occupies 10 Downing Street at any one time to do so. It would mean that one network and one set of views would become entrenched. Prime ministers, thank goodness, come and go, and so, over time, some sort of rough balance is achieved. Convention, not law, helps achieve this, so it is a pity that Boris pushed too hard for too many people in his resignation honours and that Rishi Sunak pushed back too fiercely. As a beneficiary of the present system, I hereby declare my interest, but my point stands. If the Commons is to dominate our legislature, as it has at least since 1689, the second chamber must be no more than a semi-independent, semi-legitimate body composed largely by ‘the changes and chances of this fleeting world’.

The case of Carla Foster, who broke the law by taking abortion-inducing drugs provided for her by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service when eight months pregnant and has been sentenced to what amounts (before any remission) to 14 months in custody, contains many complicating factors. So the uniform media reaction to the case is odd. Straight out of the traps come certain pre-agreed lines. One is a protest that the law under which Ms Foster was convicted goes back to the 19th century. If that were an automatic objection, it would undermine our entire system of criminal law which goes back to the 12th century or even earlier. Another is the claim that the criminal law should have no jurisdiction over abortion – surely a highly contestable claim about a matter of such importance for mothers, babies and society in general. On the BBC Today programme on Tuesday, all three participants – two guests and the presenter, Mishal Husain – were against the jail sentence and in favour of law reform. No spokesman appeared for the needs of the unborn child or to point out how bad it was that, partly because of Covid, the abortion-inducing drugs had been so easily issued by post. Mishal Husain suddenly announced that abortion has not been decriminalised in this country. It was not clear what she meant, but I think she may have been pushing the current clamour that abortion should be a universal human right rather than an operation permitted under certain circumstances, and only if approved by doctors. The Foster case is a classic example of the need for a nuanced debate. Instead, we are getting propaganda.

I have before me HSBC’s ‘Defence Equipment Sector Policy’. As part of its ‘responsible banking’, the bank not only, as might be expected, refuses to provide financial services for manufacturers, sellers, buyers or users of biological and chemical weapons, but also of ‘other weapons’. These are defined as ‘guns or missiles, platforms for weaponry, such as tanks and combat aircraft; and material parts of a weapon or a platform for weaponry with no generally accepted non-military use, such as the turret of a tank’. Thus – my example, not HSBC’s – no British company making tanks, NLAWS or Storm Shadows to help Ukraine could get any help from Britain’s largest bank. HSBC says this is because all that it does is ‘underpinned by the principles and values which drive our overall approach to business’. These same principles and values see no problem in closing the accounts of anti-Beijing democratic parties in Hong Kong.

Following my item here last week in which I described how Ukrainians identify Russians speaking Ukrainian by their inability to pronounce the word for ‘white bread’, I hear from Jonathan Ruffer. He tells me that, in 1945, Russians trying to stop Germans and let Austrians pass made everyone say the word for ‘squirrel’, which is Eichhörnchen.

My only regret about my recent trip to Ukraine was that I was forced to get a general press pass for military media accreditation. For 43 years, it has been a point of pride with me never to have such a thing. Having never joined a trade union (another point of pride), I never qualified for the press pass which, in those days, union membership provided. ‘Expires 25 March’ is the melancholy message on my first ever press card.