Candidates for election to EU Commission presidency set out their stalls

Fair play to the BBC: they did actually transmit live Eurovision's coverage of the debate in which the six candidates for election to one of the EU's key posts responded to questions on the major issues facing the Union. They could have done more by trailing it on the News Channel, but let us be thankful for their showing it at all when it was not certain that Brexit would be discussed. In the event, the two leading items were on migration and jobs, as they have been for much of the last five years in the Parliament which is shortly to end.

All but one of the candidates used English, which seems likely to remain the EU's lingua franca even if  we leave, rather than their native language. Few UK political leaders could contribute lucidly to a debate in French or German, let alone Dutch or Danish.