Stephen McGinty: Have a cigar – and do Cuba's tobacco rollers a good turn

AT the Conservative Party conference this week, David Cameron was chastised for taking a sip of champagne at the Spectator bash. Bubbly, you see, has been banned by the party for which it was once mother's milk. Conjures the wrong image, one of wasteful excess at a time of fiscal crisis. It's improper, or so the party spin-doctors believe, to enjoy a glass while plotting to hack away at public-sector jobs as soon as you slip through the door of No10.

So the image of David Cameron sipping a glass of bubbly at, roughly, £9 a glass is wrong, but few batted an eyelid at the sight of Peter Mandelson, the epitome of New Labour, delivering his speech the previous week, while wearing, as later reported, ...