“It is not a Manichean fight between light and dark. It is the standard everyday political challenge to find a plausible grey outcome with flecks of colour on the horizon.,” Conor King from the Innovative Research Universities calls for senators considering the government’s funding bill to focus on ways to improve it (as the IRU suggests) rather than denounce it.

The last time CMM saw “Manichean” in a media statement it was announcing the Cathar Crusade in 1209.