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For all its innocuous-sounding name, waterboarding has more to do with Langley than with Malibu Beach. It’s an elaborate torture shown with harrowing realism in the film Zero Dark Thirty.

The film uses a semi-documentary narrative to depict the protracted CIA hunt of Osama Bin Laden, designated, in the style of those Jimmy Cagney pictures, as Public Enemy Number One.

Over the life of this blog I’ve said many nasty things about Dave, taking exception to just about every policy he has championed. The recent policy I found ill-advised was his fanatical touting of single-sex marriage, but the most frequent criticism has dealt with Dave’s shilly-shallying on Europe – and also his shortage of any noticeable qualifications for high office.

Several years ago I had to discharge myself from an NHS hospital after three days of receiving no visit from anyone who could diagnose my excruciating gall stones. By the time I escaped and got to a private consultant my gall bladder had become gangrenous. Another day or two in the tender care of the NHS and I would have been dead.

Yesterday’s vote on same-sex marriage puts a silver lining on Chris Huhne’s cloud. He can now marry his homosexual mistress and receive conjugal visits in prison.

For the rest of us, this perverse vote represents yet another outrage perpetrated by the revolting clique governing the country. It’s easy enough to see the destruction wreaked on yet another fundamental institution of civilised society, one that predates the state. What one fails to detect at first glance is any sizeable group that can feel better as a result.

Friends and readers know that my affection for today’s politicians in general and leftie politicians in particular isn’t without limits.

Chris Huhne falls into that category, which would normally make him an unlikely candidate for my compassion, even though he is a fellow BMW driver. And yet Huhne deserves it, not because I have anything but disdain for him, but because his accusers are even worse in their hypocrisy.

According to America’s VP Joe Biden, Dave’s vague promise – well, a hint at the contingent possibility of a promise – of an EU referendum puts in jeopardy world peace, prosperity and security.

According to Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister Nikolai Mladenov, Dave’s obliquely expressed reluctance to greet with open arms another million Balkan immigrants puts in jeopardy any chance of an EU compromise that’s supposed to precede the vaguely promised  referendum.

This question is particularly puzzling because every answer hitherto provided fails to convince. After all, there’s every indication that this perverse bill was concocted recently and all of a sudden – with nary a hint of it in the Tory electoral manifesto.

So why this sudden outburst of enthusiasm? Why would even such a reasonably intelligent man as Education Secretary Michael Gove turn into a blithering idiot when the subject comes up?

As the parliamentary vote on homomarriage draws nearer, arguments in favour are becoming ever more idiotic. But even against this background, the Equalities Minister Helen Grant can claim pride of place.

On 30 January, the 80^th anniversary of Hitler’s ascent to power, the German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle published in The Times an article with the self-explanatory title Britain’s narrow view of the EU is wrong.

Dave’s worried about black and Asian voters. That is, he doesn’t really worry about them as blacks or Asians. It’s their being voters that gives him sleepless nights.

To be more precise, Dave is concerned that ethnic minorities don’t vote Tory. Just 16 percent of them did the honourable thing at the last election, which just won’t do.