When I joined the House of Commons Clerk’s Department 20 years ago, there was a helpful list of formerly common phrases which were no longer to be used. Among them was ‘Spanish practices’, that arch description often applied to irregular or restrictive workplace arrangements, which I suspect had hardly been spotted in the wild for a decade or more. It was an impermissible slur, of course, dating from the days of the first Elizabeth, but it came back to my mind yesterday.

A contretemps with the notoriously intemperate and thin-skinned Trump might seem an attractive distraction

The Financial Times picked up an announcement in the Madrid daily El País that the Spanish Ministry of Defence would no longer be considering the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II for its future combat aircraf

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