“There was always trouble, and he always rose from the resulting miasma looking a lovable scamp: lovable, anyway, to that gratifyingly large sector of the populace to whom he'd always be a figure of fun: breathing a bit of the old jolly into politics, and where's the harm in that, eh? As for those who hated him, they were never going to change their minds, and since he was in a better position to fuck them up than they were him, they didn't give him sleepless nights.”