Catch-Up Service: the lop-sided referendum and a genuine restaurant name
A round-up of things in case you missed them
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• I wrote on Sunday about the binariness of politics. If David Cameron loses this referendum, he will go down in history as a short-lived failure. If he wins, on the other hand, he will be hailed in some quarters as a brilliant success – although half his MPs and most of his party members will have got the "wrong" result, and apart from winning three referendums to keep things the same (AV, Scotland and the EU) his achievements would be thin.
Not only is this referendum binary, though, it is unusually lop-sided. As George Osborne pointed out yesterday, none of our allies, no significant international organisations and hardly any credible domestic institutions are in favour of the UK withdrawing from the EU. He didn't say this, but Boris Johnson and Michael Gove are the only substantial politicians on the Leave side. Yet about half of those likely to vote say they will vote to Leave. Either the case for Leave is so strong that it endures in underground, disorganised form and will survive whatever the "establishment" throws at it, or it is an incoherent rebel yell that will crumble when people face a serious choice about the nation's future. I can't decide which.
• I took part in a discussion of The Independent's move to digital-only at Ad Week 2016 yesterday called, "It's changing. Are you?" with Christian Broughton, the Editor, Hannah Fearn, Independent Voices Editor, Zach Leonard, Managing Director, and Scott Deutrom, Digital Revenue Officer.
• Time to catch up with other news from what Gordon Brown once called the websphere.
Thanks to Moose Allain for this:
"Oh no, I've got glue all over my autobiography! Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it."
And for this:
"Old McDonald had a robot
"ai ai o."
To Ant Walker for this:
"Do you know what makes me lose my rag? My badly organised cleaning products cupboard."
And to Andy Hutchcraft for this:
"I thought I just saw Basie and Dracula out walking together, but I think I may be wrong on both counts."
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