Afternoon:
10°c
It was a performance to chill the heart of any Tory spin doctor. Boris Johnson, Mayor of the world's most international city, calling for an EU referendum to stick it to Johnny Foreigner?
Don't be silly. George Osborne promising to make us work a year longer before retirement? Of course not. The incident that put the Tory spin machine in full-scale rebuttal mode was David Cameron enjoying a glass of champagne.
How very silly. Don't get me wrong: I find the sight of this bunch of Right-wing public schoolboys sipping champagne pretty nauseating - but because of their politics, not the champagne. To me, champagne isn't a badge of luxury, it's simply a sign that you know how to enjoy life.
The French have long understood this. For all the tales of champagne-swilling City boys, Russian oligarchs and Chinese nouveaux riches, it is the French themselves who guzzle 56 per cent of annual champagne production - or 181 million bottles, almost four a year for every French adult.
That's five times our per capita champagne consumption, even though the UK is by far the biggest export market.
Supermarkets all over France boast vast champagne sections. They drink it, like us, on special occasions but much more often than that too - as an aperitif, or with food, such as shellfish.
It's not some kind of statement of "le bling bling", it's just because they think it's a fantastic, versatile wine.
I can testify to that. As the Standard's wine critic, I taste thousands of bottles every year.
And I have to say that for sheer drinking pleasure - the moment at a tasting when I wish I could swallow a mouthful rather than spit it out - it's more often than not a champagne that's in my hand.
Admittedly, I do get to taste some serious bubbles. The Vielles Vignes Françaises 1999 that I tasted while out at Bollinger for the harvest last month will stay with me a long time.
Meanwhile, only a serious medical condition - decapitation, say - will stop me making it to a Krug vintage lunch later this month.
But there are plenty of champagnes at around the £20 mark that I would gladly knock back.
There's remarkably consistent quality across the grandes marques: there are hardly any bad big-name champagnes, even if some are less interesting than others. Which is more than can be said for, say, Californian wines.
I bet the humble-but-tasty ASDA Brut NV I tasted yesterday lunchtime (£14.98, made by Chanoine, the biggest seller in France) would disappear fast at even a smart reception. That wouldn't buy you more than a dull house wine in most London restaurants.
Champagne may cost more but it's expensive to produce. The region has some of the highest land prices of any vineyards in the world.
Grapes for better champagne, at least, are harvested by hand. Producers have to keep vast quantities in storage for years during its two fermentations, and then go through an arduous process of blending to maintain the consistency of the house style.
If the result isn't cheap, even for better nonvintage brands (Bollinger's Special Cuvée NV, which I picked a few grapes for last month, is around £30 on offer) it's all high quality - and guaranteed to induce triumphalism.
And perhaps that's the real problem. Fear of being photographed holding a glass of bubbly isn't just a question of hard times and politicians not wanting to be seen living the high life.
Champagne is just a bit too unashamedly hedonistic, too brazenly confident, for a lot of English people to be able to stomach, full stop.
Too bad: all the more for us champagne socialists and triumphalist Tories.
