History has led us to a position where tort law no longer has any serious justification, but all the routes away from it are blocked by powerful interest groups. Tort is impossible to justify but equally impossible to change substantially. For theorists of tort, it is an itch which constantly irritates, but which we cannot properly scratch. We are left with only three options: to pretend that tort is rational (a pretence which leads us to deny plain facts about its practical operation); to continue to analyse emerging tort developments, in the rather forlorn hope that a defensible theory will emerge; or to admit its irrationality, note also that it satisfies some real needs and look for better methods of meeting those needs.