EDWARD HEATH, RIP

A pretty dreadful prime minister, in my view. A viscerally anti-American Tory who wanted to submerge Britain into a European super-state, and never managed to forgive Margaret Thatcher for succeeding where he so manifestly failed. There was barely a dictator he couldn’t find an excuse for. Of Tiananmen Square, he said: “There was a crisis after a month in which the civil authorities had been defied. They took action. Very well.” I must also say that it is very weird that the obits barely say anything about his private life. He never married. It was widely assumed he was gay. Why is this somehow a subject that we cannot even discuss after someone has died? I know of no one in British politics who didn’t talk of it privately. And a gay prime minister – however terrible he was at the job – is an historic matter of fact or at least inquiry. Or was he just a gay man of a cerain generation who learned that the only way to control his feelings was to kill them off?