Some quick thoughts on Sam Gyimah's resignation after conversations with various Conservative MPs: 1) the chances of a second referendum are a lot higher than I thought:

They’re shooting into the chamber.

TRUMP: "I've decided to eat babies."

PEOPLE: "He can't eat babies, that's super illegal."

TRUMP, on TV, eating babies, not even cooking them first: "People are saying that I really am the best baby-eater, folks."

NYT: "Trump Vs. Babies: The Rhetoric On Both Sides Must Stop"

Jeff Flake tweets: "It is a sad day in America when this callous man can eat babies live on TV"

Jeff Flake, 10 seconds later, votes to help him install a series of 4,000 new judges that are very, very pro-babyphagia.

Judge Kavanaugh, found drunk in a Capitol Hill closet: "I LIKE BEER. OKAY? I LIKE BEER AND I LIKE BABIES AND THAT'S NOT SO WRONG. THAT'S RIGHT. I LIKE BABIES DIPPED IN BEER. I JUST DIP EM. IN THE BEER. THE BABIES. THE BABIES I EAT. OKAY? THAT'S AMERICA."

Mike Pence, wringing his hands about the baby-eating: "We must take care of our children. Our youngest must be protected on this troubling day."

Mike Pence then invites a Baby Chef to say a prayer.

Twitter Users: "It's a distraction technique! Trump eating babies is trying to DISTRACT YOU from ALL THE OTHER HORRORS, which are themselves distractions from the BABY-EATING. It's DISTRACTIONS ALL THE WAY DOWN."

Trump: *eats tons of babies at a rally*

*literal tons of babies*

The death of Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande brings to my mind the triumph of excellence in political leadership as well as rebellion against the political order.

A lot has been said about LKJ since he died yesterday and I hope only to contribute my perspective to enrich all said.

My emphasis with history has always been to draw out lessons relevant to the present, to show how trends repeat themselves and to show certain hypocritical contradictions within the present system.

Only few others qualify as well as LKJ to do all the three - I hope I do justice.

One area pundits have largely missed out in the Jakande story is the very beginning - both of his life and of his politics.

LKJ's parents were from Omu-Aran in present day Kwara State but he contributed more to Lagos than so many others - we will return to this subsequently.

LKJ was not originally a political ally of Awolowo - a number of elders were with Awo right from the very beginning but LKJ contributed politically to Awolowo at a crucial time of religious threat to the dominance of the Action Group (Awo's party) in the pre-Independence mid 50s.

A group had been formed in 1957 and named the National Muslim League headed by Alhaji R.A. Smith who had been very critical of Awolowo's AG as a Christian party and moved to align with the Northern People's Congress of Sir Ahmadu Bello.

The political threat to Awo was very real.

Alright, I'm going to explain this one more time because I keep getting tweets like "people who vote for politicians who let them die of hypothermia deserve to die of hypothermia."

The people who voted red in Texas are, by and large, relatively fine right now. Yes, the storm has hurt them but the storm was going to hurt everyone.

But. They're either rich enough that *their* power wasn't cut off or rural enough that they have fireplaces and wood and wells.

Those millions without power are in places like Dallas county and Tarrant county and Harris county, I.e., the urban places that have the highest concentration of blue voters.

So it's not "(all/most) people voted for hypothermia and now they will fittingly die of hypothermia".

It's "(certain) people voted for the folks in cities to die of hypothermia, and they are, while the aforementioned voters are safe and dry and relatively comfortable."

Well, gosh, why don't those voters *do something* rather than passively being killed??

Do you know how many people live in Harris county? 4 million. Do you know how many ballot drop-off boxes they were allocated last election? 1.

1 box for 4 million people.