Q: "Should respectable weeklies be in the habit of giving prominent moderate politicians, who don't want for platforms already, a whole page to jot down their unmediated, self-loving self-justifications? No doubt there is a place for "The Diary" -- see Alan Bennett's imperishable feuilletons for The London Review of Books -- but have Margaret Hodge (8 November), Rory Stewart (1 November), Joanna Cherry (25 October), David Gauke (27 September) or Jess Phillips (20 September) told us anything that couldn't be better explored in the company of an adversarial interviewer? I ask these questions rhetorically, but perhaps the answers aren't quite so obvious to you as they are to me."

A: "Fair point, Rodney. We should possibly stop it. But we thought we'd open the Diary up to politicians across all parties during the election period."

All parties, but only one political tendency.