After prime ministers waddle out of Downing Street for the final time there’s a tendency for their looks to, well, go to pot. Think Gordon Brown’s haunted features or Tony Blair’s stocking-over-the head visage. So when David Cameron appeared before the Joint Committee on National Security Strategy yesterday I was expecting an ungainly mass of … Read more
As acts of revenge go, it was sleep with the fishes, severed horse head in the bed stuff. A Sicilian double-tap to the temple. Godfather author Mario Puzo would have struggled to concoct anything quite so vicious. Alex Salmond’s long-awaited appearance in front of the Scottish parliament’s harassment committee was savage, with no holds barred. … Read more
It’s hard to look at Gavin Williamson without seeing him wearing dunce’s hat: HENRY DEEDES watches the Education Secretary’s statement in Parliament By Henry Deedes for the Daily Mail Published: 22:06 GMT, 25 February 2021 | Updated: 23:56 GMT, 25 February 2021 Just as confidence in the Government is returning to vaguely respectable levels, enter … Read more
Boris had undergone a snip. No, not the sort of painful chop that dog of his clearly needs. Ouch! Heavens, no. I’m talking about a haircut. With the nation’s nimble-wristed crimpers barred from wielding their scissors for another two months, Carrie had apparently grown impatient with her fiance’s mop and attacked the unruly mess herself. … Read more
Boris Johnson opened up the shutters but it was just a crack, a chink, a cigarette paper-slim slit. May as well have kept them slammed shut for all the good it did. Four more months. Another four months of pettifogging rules and restrictions. Our emergence from this year of hell will not so much be … Read more
Blimey, Del Boy Hancock has struck it lucky again. He’s scored a whole bunch of testing kits off some outfit called Surescreen. A sun lotion firm? Don’t be a plonker, Rodders. Nah, they’re a top-class healthcare firm in Derby. Cushty. And the Health Sec had only gone and scored 20million of the things. Lovely jubbly! … Read more
There was shouting, lewd language and more boisterous behaviour than a rugby club on a Saturday night: a scene of such squabbling it was like the Bash Street Kids rather than a meeting of upstanding members of a local community. We may think of parish councillors as benign folk concerned with little more than the … Read more
We’ve had to wait a while but Sir Keir Starmer’s lid finally blew yesterday. Out of nowhere, that neatly oiled head of his simply exploded like a shaken-up can of Vimto. For months we have grown accustomed to the Labour leader occupying a saintly plinth inside the chamber, a beacon of trustworthiness, a model of … Read more
Should Matthew Hancock’s proclamations get any more self-regarding they may need to carry a Government disclaimer. Pretty soon signs will have to flash up on the screens around the Commons. ‘Warning: Shameless self-promotion alert’, or: ‘The following statement may contain lengthy tracts of unbearable smugness.’ The reason for Mr Hancock’s bushy-tailed chirpiness of late is … Read more
Boris Johnson was like a dinner lady doling out a soggy rice pud: HENRY DEEDES watches the Prime Minister’s visit to Scotland By Henry Deedes for the Daily Mail Published: 22:42 GMT, 28 January 2021 | Updated: 22:42 GMT, 28 January 2021 Details of Boris Johnson’s trip to Scotland yesterday were available on what gimlet-eyed … Read more