VINEGAR, squirted liberally, is an effective treatment for flying ants. They really don’t like it. Something similar may be happening in our politics. We will know more overnight, when the Peterborough by-election result will be announced. Can Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party win this core Middle Britain seat?
Difficult, but it would be a heck of a result and could do to those insects in Westminster what a dose of Sarson’s does to the winged pests that erupt from house walls on hot days.
Even if Farage does not pull off a cup upset in Peterborough, Westminster is starting to get jumpy. About time, too! Theresa May quits the Tory leadership tomorrow and the race to succeed her has begun with almost as many runners as the Grand National.
Quite a few of them will end up in the glue factory.
Prince Charles’s pro-EU pal Rory Stewart, the little-known International Development Secretary, has made a wonderful fool of himself by standing for the job. Stewart has filmed selfie videos presenting himself as man-of-the-masses, in places such as, er, genteel Kew Gardens.
Deluded commentators in the Westminster village have praised his social-media “outreach”. It’s the political elite’s echo chamber at work again.
On Tuesday evening Stewart stood on a box at Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park, to “speak to the people”. What a gumby. The only bystanders at Speaker’s Corner these days are tourists, ice-cream vendors and a few winos.
GYIMAH SIMPLY LOOKED A PRAT
If Stewart really wants to meet the people to see what they think of his plan to soften Brexit to the point of non-existence, he should haul himself off to somewhere like Asda in Walsall, in the West Midlands.
Brummies would soon let him know exactly what they thought of his proposal to ignore the 2016 referendum’s 17.4million Leave voters.
Meanwhile, the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock (another soft Brexiteer), polished his credentials to be Tory leader by releasing a video of himself playing office cricket with a few of his civil servants. I had to watch this stunt twice just to make sure it wasn’t a spoof from Armando Iannucci, one of the sharp comic brains behind Alan Partridge.
Not that Hancock is the silliest of the bunch. Sam Gyimah, an obscure former junior minister, was last night persisting with his leadership campaign even though he did not have the declared support of a single MP (except, presumably, himself).
This was almost pathetic in the proper sense of the word — ie enough to make you feel sad for the bloke. But in the end I’m afraid my heart remained unmoved. Gyimah simply looked a prat.
Labour’s comrades are at each other’s throats, the Lib Dems have their own leadership contest (ZZZZZZZZ) and the Change UK brigade, just a few weeks after their creation, are disintegrating like one of strongman Geoff Capes’s deckchairs. More than half of them quit, leaving a rump that will be led by spluttering Anna Soubry, as shouty as a Jack Russell snapping at a postie’s ankl
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