On the eve of his 38th birthday, he is a little chunkier, with an open stance that must make the bowler sometimes wonder whether he is ready to bat.Hard though Taylor fought – driving, cutting and hooking in fine style – he was still unable to do anything about the air of unreality which hung heavy over the game. On Wednesday, John Crawley and Neil Fairbrother had assured Lancashire of a good score and now Mike Watkinson and Ian Austin converted it into a huge one. After all the upheavals at Hove in the winter and spring, Sussex knew that this was going to be a long season. After losing four senior players and surviving a palace revolution, the remaining players cannot be blamed for what has happened.
Fortunately for them, Neil Taylor took up the challenge at Old Trafford and was the only Sussex batsman, metaphorically, to bite the ears of the Lancashire bowlers. When a side needing 412 to avoid the follow- on has sunk to 65 for 4 there is not a lot that can be done, but at least when Taylor was in Lancashire knew they had a fight on their hands.This may sound a little unfair, not to say ungenerous, to Lancashire, for no side can do more than beat the opposition set against it.

It was as one-sided as that and one could only feel sorry for Sussex, whose most realistic ambition now is to try and make sure the match goes to a fourth day. Gilbert and his English- born wife Hilary are due to “talk turkey” as chairman Mike Soper puts it, this weekend. The discussions will take into account family needs, security and so on, with Gilbert promising a decision will follow shortly He may well settle for a two-year deal at The Oval .. Had this been a boxing match the referee would have stopped the fight in mid-morning. Now in the space of 10 months they have lifted the Sunday League and the B&H Cup.But hanging on to the 36-year-old may not be as easy as offering him an all-in package worth a reputed pounds 100,000 a year.

In addition to that they are eager to secure the services of manager David Gilbert for a further three years, if reports around Guildford are anything to go by.Gilbert, a former Australian Test fast bowler, has achieved near miracles since his arrival in the winter of 1996 Surrey had won nothing in 14 years. The CBI has probably never before diverged so decisively from Conservative party policy.Conversely, Gordon Brown’s speech yesterday, emphatically keeping open the option of EMU membership, emphasises the harmony between CBI thinking and New Labour’s. Next week’s report of the CBI survey on EMU will show that while the membership was divided over whether Britain should enter a single currency in the first wave – and voted on balance against it – it dismissed by a large majority the Hague notion of ruling it out for a decade. But if a referendum delivered PR for the Commons, then, and perhaps not until then, the temptation for him, and perhaps Chris Patten too, to create a new business-friendly, broadly pro-European party of the centre right would surely be irresistible.For despite the doubts clouding the future of EMU, it still looks as though the big money in politics is not going to follow the Europhobes. But a respectable showing by such a grouping would carry its own momentum: for one thing, it would create a new constituency within Conservatism whose interests lay in securing PR for Westminster, thus making a “yes” vote in a referendum on Commons electoral reform all the more likely.There is an irony here; throughout his political life Mr Clarke has been a committed first-past-the-post man. So there may be a practical, as well as a principled, reason for these Strasbourg aspirants to form their own pro-European centre- right grouping, with their own candidates’ list, manifesto and business backing: namely, that it would, thanks to a PR system, provide easily their best (perhaps their only) chance of being elected.What, supposing these heady events so unfolded, would be the role of the party’s still biggest active politician, Mr Clarke? It is still doubtful that he, and therefore his supporters on the front bench, would overtly support a 1999 breakaway of that sort.

First, most of the party’s incumbent MEPs come from the South-east, so there will be fierce competition among them for limited places on the same regional list. Second, the leader will be under intense pressure to purge some of those notoriously pro-European persons from the candidates list – or at least to put them sufficiently low down the lists to give them little chance of victory. Mr Howard, in particular, has not let up in trying to commit the party to renegotiating, under threat of withdrawal, the terms of British membership of the EU, something he fondly imagines may prove an election winner in 2001 or 2002. All the omens are that Mr Hague will insist on a manifesto that at the very least reiterates outright opposition to British EMU membership on any foreseeable timetable, and which would therefore be hard to stomach for at least 15 of the 18 sitting Conservative MEPs, not to mention those of the ex-MEPs who aspire to return to Strasbourg.That might not be enough on its own to provoke a breakaway; but it may well be compounded by the party’s choice of candidates. The notion that a referendum on the Amsterdam treaty, given the new administration’s current popularity and the modesty of the changes agreed at the summit, would result in anything but a huge victory for the Government, is absurd; but that did not stop Mr Hague calling for one. It is doubtful, however, whether dominant figures of the Shadow Cabinet, the Howards, Lilleys and Redwoods, would allow him to do that even if he wanted to. Does this not look, on the face of it, a party desperate to reunite at almost any price? Why on earth, therefore, should it break apart over something as trivial and hitherto mind-numbingly uninteresting to the public as elections to the European Parliament?
The reasons have to do in about equal measure with the principles and personal ambitions of some not very well-known Tory politicians, those who either hold, or aspire to hold, seats as members of the EU parliament.It is theoretically possible that Mr Hague will draw up for the European elections a manifesto so bland that even the most ardent pro-European could comfortably live with it.

They did so under a novel formula which relieved them of the obligation to defend Mr Hague’s promise to oppose for at least 10 years British entry into a single currency, but required them not to attack it, either. Kenneth Clarke paid a magnanimous visit to Mr Hague’s victory party. He then went on to persuade deeply hesitant figures on the pro-European left of the party – such as Stephen Dorrell, David Curry and Ian Taylor – to accept posts in the shadow team, despite Mr Hague’s Euro-scepticism. But it is schism in the Tory party that remains by far the most seismic of its potential consequences. That there was not more evidence of a Tory split after William Hague’s election as leader was due more to the vanquished than to the victor. “Does your brother want his house burnt down?”Poetry on the page and in the mind – musically designed, deeply felt words, shared dangerously between audience and poet – has always mattered and always will Whatever EMI gets up to..