Dear James,
I must apologize. I was working in Paris last week and therefore unable to write my normal letter to you or even say thank you for your own rare response to me. But needs must and work must take first priority. As it happens I was well aware that my Eurostar trip would be my last as a European Citizen. From January 31st I shall become a member of a ‘Third Nation’ with…
Read MoreDear James,
Something strange just happened. Something that was brewing up to be one of the great ‘Fake News’ stories of all times has suddenly been turned on its head and become one of the great ‘Truth Stories’ of all times. The Iranians have just admitted publically that they shot down, by mistake, the Ukrainian airliner on Wednesday.
Read MoreDear James,
Now comes the hard bit. While claiming that Britain is about to usher in ‘a golden age’ and boasting of our ‘tremendous potential’ in the world, Boris Johnson now has to face realities. The first reality is in foreign policy. The second is home economics. On neither count is the news encouraging.
Read MoreDear James,
For months I have been searching for any biography of your party’s Senior Adviser, Dominic Cummings. I’ve scoured Waterstone’s, searched the web, pestered friends but all I’ve found so far is a vapid cameo of the man in Wikipaedia. It is clearly too soon for a biography and much much too soon for an autobiography. But yesterday, amazingly, we were given,
Read MoreCall me old fashioned, but I want to offer you my sincere congratulations for your win last month and to wish you and your family a happy new year. Chivalry, you see, is still alive and well in our land despite the violence done to it during the last three years.
Read MoreDear James,
There was one big winner last Thursday. That winner is called democracy for it is democracy that has allowed the needs of the people of the long neglected North and Midlands to be heard. At last they have the nation’s ear.
Read MoreDear James,
The vast majority of us are innocent of history. Things that look small in our everyday lives eventually prove themselves to be of huge historical importance. Larger events prove themselves over the long-term as insignificant.
Read MoreBoris has a new base and I’m not referring to his posterior. It is the North and the Midlands and consists of all those traditional Labour seats which so comprehensively abandoned Jeremy Corbyn on Thursday. Boris and his new base will make strange bedfellows. No doubt they will start off co-habiting. But will it ever lead to a real marriage?
Read MoreLast night was a great night for democracy. With unwavering accuracy it identified the central problem of our nation with pinpoint accuracy. Bolsover, Bishop Auckland, the Don Valley and Workington in Cumbria are just a few of the prime Labour seats, some dating back to well before the second world war, that have gone to the Conservatives.
Read MoreDear James, Do you have a soul? Or is the soul some out dated concept left over from our mediaeval past? Certainly no one has found it yet, discovered it with MMR techniques or revealed it through x-ray crystallography. It has no location, no scientific identity, no way to measure its dimensions or its activity levels. And yet…
Read MoreAn American friend has sent me an article from the Wall Street Journal. The author, Joseph Sternburg, claims that Brexit is not really about Brexit. ‘Brexit is only one of several possible pathways by which Britain might reach whichever state of good or bad governance it attains next.’ How right he is.
Read MoreA terrible choice has been laid before the British electorate in what has been a shoddy and shabby election. Full of empty promises and forests of money trees, last night the two main party leaders held their final head-to-head debate and demonstrated how unsuited both are for the highest position in the land.
Read MoreYesterday, the BBC’s Andrew Neil issued Boris with a challenge. Mr Johnson gives every impression of being frit as he continues to refuse to face Mr Neil, so I am asking you James to answer on behalf of your cowering leader. And what better better way than to let Mr Neil pose the questions himself. Are you sitting comfortably James?
Read MoreIt’s typical of your leader. Come up with a memorable line and pursue it until the simile or metaphor crashes into its own contradictions. Boris’s current choice phrase is ‘oven ready’. His deal is ‘oven ready’. The future trade deals which…
Read MoreLast night Channel Four aired a debate on climate change and invited the leaders of all the parties to participate. All leaders appeared except for Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. In their place Channel Four placed two ‘empty chairs’ in the form of ice sculptures of the planet which, of course, slowly melted during the debate.
Read MoreSo you have been found out. Both of you, Tories and Labour alike. Fingers in those cookie jars. Telling fibs again. Swirling those veils. Trying to pull a fast one. Lighting up those future uplands with more huff and puff, more huster and bluster. Because, no matter how we try to say it James,
Read MoreYour Tory Party local brochure plopped through the letterbox this morning. Apart from the full frontal of you standing by the ford at Kersey, I counted 47 separate photographs of your good self grinning endlessly into the camera in a variety of local contexts. I am afraid that I am not impressed.
Read MoreI have to be honest. I’m not much interested in the flurry of manifestos that have been funnelling out of the party HQs in the last few days. Most are chimera, most will be consigned to the bin within three weeks and what survives will be whittled away by subsequent events. So…
Read MoreThe first head-to-head debate is over. And the verdict? Laughter! When Boris was asked whether he thought that truth was important in the election, he agreed and the audience laughed. When Corbyn mentioned his four-day week, again the audience laughed. Lies or Utopias, no one is happy with the choice before them.
Read MoreYou can’t be a very happy bunny, having to brave this awful weather in this, our ‘Election of Discontent’. It was a desperate gamble by Boris to go for a winter date. Already the rain has brought floods to the north and on Tuesday…
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