Gary Lineker has invited a refugee to move into his mansion in Barnes, on the lush, south-western fringes of London. Do you know Barnes? It’s doubly desirable, being both leafy and on the river: a slice of prime urbanalia with posh cheese shops and residents such as Gyles Brandreth and Sir Tim Rice — but … Read more
Whenever there’s a session of International Trade questions, the chamber takes on a whisky sour flavour. Getting through the whole hour usually requires popping a couple of antacids down the gullet. The reasons for this bitter atmosphere are twofold. The first is that opposition MPs spend most of their time goading the Government’s post-Brexit trade … Read more
First PMQs of the new term and Boris Johnson was, I’m sorry to say, poor. Provocatively poor. It wasn’t just that he hadn’t bothered with any of the necessary holiday reading – it was clear he’d barely glanced at the back covers. After such a political hotchpotch of a summer, this was a showdown the … Read more
Deep down, Tim Davie may be rather grateful to whoever came up with the bonkers idea of deleting the words of Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory from this year’s Last Night of the Proms. In his very first week as director-general of the BBC, Mr Davie has been handed a very simple, … Read more
Rambling. Wildly incoherent. Those beardy weirdies from Extinction Rebellion were out in Parliament Square again yesterday, subjecting all of us to hours of indecipherable gibberish. Despite being supposedly educated, they’re a decidedly inarticulate rabble. Their speakers were about as stirring as the cider-fuelled Morris dancers at my local summer fete. Mind you, things were no … Read more
Even after all this time, they still don’t understand us. The European Union clearly expects Britain, once again, to surrender its fishing grounds and betray its coastal communities for the sake of a wider, post-Brexit free trade agreement with Brussels. Why else would the EU’s lead negotiator, Michel Barnier, display such intransigence as a no-deal … Read more
For decades, the scourge of type 2 diabetes has caused untold misery. Almost four million Britons are now living with the condition. Incredibly, one in six NHS beds is occupied by a patient with the condition, which can lead to terrible complications and shortens sufferers’ lives by an average of six years – all while … Read more
Any idea that Tim Davie might enjoy a honeymoon period as the BBC’s new director-general has gone up in smoke. He takes over the job today, with the row about the Last Night of the Proms still reverberating and with every opinion poll confirming that the public firmly thinks the BBC got it wrong with … Read more
Last Thursday in my column, I celebrated an exciting new range of candles called Scents of Normality, designed to evoke the smell of places and events that have been cancelled by lockdown. These candles may sound like a joke, but I am happy to say they are real. The Festival candle is described like this: … Read more
The most powerful tool for better health is education. To get our country off its sickbed and functioning again, it is crucial that we fully reopen both our schools and our universities. But that won’t happen as long as millions are terrified of returning to normal life. The Government urgently needs to send out a … Read more