The Mirror Crack'd

Only just into the second full week of a six-week general election campaign and already the campaigning seems to have trickled into the sand. Maybe this is down to the hiatus before finalising the official candidates' lists while awaiting publication of party manifestos (the excitement never starts) or, more likely, that parties (perhaps with the honourable exception of the Greens) seem bereft of any new policy offers. Those they have managed to cobble together, like the Tories' National Service dog-whistle nonsense, have fallen flat as a fart. Meanwhile, Sir Ed Davey for the Lib Dems has been gamely falling into water, admittedly in a worthy effort to highlight illegal sewage discharges into our waterways, but such images run the risk of becoming hostages to fortune. Falling over on the beach at Brighton did for Neil Kinnock's chances in 1992 when a clip was featured mercilessly in the opening sequence of the satirical puppet show, 'Spitting Image'.  Rishi Sunak

Your post is in the Czech News agency, Reuters, reports that the owner of Royal Mail has agreed to a £3.57billion takeover by Czech billionaire, Daniel Kretinsky.  Founded by Henry VIII in 1513 purely for royal mail, it was opened up to public use by Charles I in 1635 and sold off in a government asset strip - sorry, privatisation - in 2013, when the Post Office was also split off as a separate entity - and that ended well didn't it? Just ask Paula Vennells. On second thoughts, don't bother - she was paid over 5 million quid of public money not to know what was going on. Fit to bust Meanwhile, City AM reports that Thames Water, the embattled (f)utilities outfit currently losing more than 600million litres of water per day and pumping more than 72billion litres of untreated sewage into the Thames since 2020, has won an innovation award run by the regulator, Of(t)wat. Thames Water will receive £16.9million “to examine how technologies like robotics and trenchless repair methods

Finally, the long-awaited announcement has been made; Rishi Sunak has called the General Election for 4th July.  We now have a distinct possibility of bringing fourteen years of Tory (mis)rule to an end - bring it on! It's been an agonisingly long time coming but we are closer to it now than for a very long time. Not that it's a done deal, of course, a lot could still go awry (think 1992) but we can only hope - and vote - for it.  As 'Things can only get better' blared out from a protester's sound system beyond the gates of Downing Street, almost drowning out Sunak at his podium, the torrential rain did likewise. Talk about a damp squib - Sunak looked more like a drowned rat. If it was an augury, it was certainly an ominous one. Though he looked like a man who has lost the will to go on Sunak said he would fight for every vote. He will need to. We are now into the long campaign.  Believe me, it will feel v-e-r-y long. 

Today's publication of Sir Brian Langstaff's long-awaited Infected Blood Inquiry report has sent shockwaves through the Establishment.  Good. It's long overdue. Now that Rishi Sunak has accepted in his statement to the House of Commons that this is "a day of shame for the British state" we need to ask ourselves what it is about the state that leads to the proliferation of such scandals. For while this is the most shocking instance, with over 30,000 cases of infection and 3000 deaths over a fifty-year period, it is by no means the only example of government cover-up and denial. The outrage prompted by the ITV dramatisation, 'Mr Bates v The Post Office', about the Post Office Horizon computer system scandal, screened in January this year, totally overshadowed news that military veterans were reopening their compensation claims against the Ministry of Defence (MoD). They allege deliberate exposure to radiation in the UK's nuclear test programme conducted

The king sees red The first official painting of King Charles III was unveiled today and the most notable thing about it, apart from its sheer size (8' 6"), was its redness. The huge portrait was commissioned from Jonathan Yeo by the Drapers' Company to hang in Drapers' Hall, which perhaps explains its size. As to its predominant colour, I suppose red is the regal shade, and it matches the sitter's military uniform. It is actually a very impressive portrait but the hints of Don Giovanni in Hell are surely unintentional? Maybe Charles simply wants to join the Labour Party. Rockin' all over the world The last thing anyone expected when the much-travelled US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, arrived in Kyiv today was that he would take to the stage of a cellar bar with a Gibson guitar around his neck and jam with a Ukrainian rock band. His choice of repertoire, the 1989 Neil Young classic 'Rockin' in the Free world', released at the time of the fall

Scandals, that is: Windrush; Contaminated Blood; Post Office Horizon; WASPI Women; Grenfell Victims and Carers' Allowance - quite a list.* One could also add the emerging NHS maternity, HM Prisons, policing and asylum backlog scandals. But, for now, let's concentrate on those six. Many of them pre-date 2010, but none has yet been resolved in the fourteen years of Tory rule since then, nor is likely to be in the time remaining to Rishi Sunak - quite a legacy. It is a legacy - a poisoned chalice rather - most likely to be inherited by a Labour government which, to resolve satisfactorily, will require hundreds of billions of pounds to be spent - money which the Treasury currently doesn't appear to have.  This gargantuan task, on top of all the other urgent priorities for fixing a broken Britain, is going to present a massive headache for an incoming Labour government, which could seriously undermine, if not entirely derail, its economic plans. It will be a daunting challenge f

The Eurovision Song Contest, eh? You couldn't make it up - and, sadly, you don't have to. Every year since 1956 young singers - and some frankly old enough to know better - have been participating in this pan-European event, which now (go figure) includes Israel and Australia. From this it must already be apparent that there's an identity crisis in play but the assertion of its organisers that the contest is apolitical is ludicrously disingenuous, and always has been. But it's just a bit of lighthearted fun, I hear you cry. Well, the founding intentions of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) in the post-war Europe of 1956, with many European nations languishing behind the 'Iron Curtain' of the Soviet Union, including East Germany, were certainly worthy enough but its conception in those circumstances was also, ipso facto , political.  Nothing in the intervening years has lessened its politicisation and last year's contest was a clear example of that, when

Natalie Elphicke's astonishing defection from the Tories to Labour just before Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons yesterday has given rise to a great deal of comment, much of it hostile. Former Labour leader, Neil (now Lord) Kinnock, agreed that his party is a "a very broad church" but added "churches have walls and there are limits." Former Labour Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, speaking on LBC Radio, went further, saying "I'm a great believer in the powers of conversion, but I think even this one would have strained the generosity of spirit of John the Baptist, quite honestly". It is certainly true that Ms Elphicke's apparent Damascene conversion to Labour has been met with much scepticism and some anger. In fact the only Labour politician who seems to have warmly welcomed her into the party is its current Leader, Sir Keir Starmer, and this might yet be added to his record of gaffe's and missteps as a stick with whi

Just as Rishi Sunak prepared to face his first Prime Minister's Questions after his party's local government elections debacle another of his MPs crossed the floor in a shock move to sit behind Sir Keir Starmer on the Opposition benches. Natalie Elphicke, MP for Dover and Deal, described her erstwhile party as "a byword for incompetence and division”. Following Dr Dan Poulter's recent defection to Labour, and the victory of Chris Webb in the by-election in Blackpool South last Thursday, winning back the 'Red Wall' seat for Labour, Ms Elphicke's shock move can only have further deflated an already humiliated Prime Minister. Neither Dr Poulter nor Ms Elphicke intends to stand again at the general election, so only have a maximum of eight months to sit as Labour MPs, but their moves have inflicted further pain on a Tory Party that finds itself beleaguered on all sides. Given Ms Elphicke's parliamentary track record her move is hardly likely to be motivated