Is any Labour MP brave enough to admit the truth about Andy Burnham?
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Amidst the summer’s plethora of advertisements aimed at the moronic, desperate and gullible, an especially crass one stands out. Ralph Lauren have decided, for reasons best known to themselves, that their well-heeled and preppy customers need the unholy duo of the actor Tom Hiddleston and a computer-generated ‘Polo Bear’ to advertise their product.
This week's magazine
The shady funding of net zero
There is a problem with British politics. Dark money from abroad is being funnelled into our system. A complex web of interlocking charities, thinktanks, advocacy groups and campaign outfits is being bank-rolled to push a policy agenda onto the public that makes us poorer, puts us in hock to hostile powers and undermines working people. According to the left, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage are puppets of such shadowy interests: Tufton Street thinktanks bankrolled by oil companies, Christian fundamentalists and perhaps even Russian money. These allegations are well-ventilated and have been exhaustively investigated. Most lead nowhere. Yet no similar scrutiny is applied to a far bigger lobbying effort – the concerted campaign to push a ruinous net-zero agenda.
There is a problem with British politics. Dark money from abroad is being funnelled into our system. A complex web of interlocking charities, thinktanks, advocacy groups and campaign outfits is being bank-rolled to push a policy agenda onto the public that makes us poorer, puts us in hock to hostile powers and undermines working people. According to the left, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage are puppets of such shadowy interests: Tufton Street thinktanks bankrolled by oil companies, Christian fundamentalists and perhaps even Russian money. These allegations are well-ventilated and have been exhaustively investigated. Most lead nowhere. Yet no similar scrutiny is applied to a far bigger lobbying effort – the concerted campaign to push a ruinous net-zero agenda.
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I tried to think, Pointless-style, of two of the countries least likely to be participating in the world kicky-ball nonsense. Then I burst into the sitting room to annoy Boy. ‘Quick! Quick! We’re missing Haiti vs Burkina Faso.’ He looked up contemptuously from the sofa. ‘Actually, Haiti are playing right now. Against Morocco. So that’s another of your comedy fails.’ Sixty years in I don’t think I’m ever going to get a handle on this football malarkey. I first realised I was different in my first week at boarding school. All the other eight-year-olds owned a football and knew how to play with it and had even been taken by their dads to matches. I was the one who knew the Latin name for the common wall lizard.