Politics

Rishi Sunak's problems aren't confined to his party. The NHS is in trouble and one of the Prime Minister's five new year pledges was to get its record waiting list – 7.2 million in NHS England alone – down, ensuring patients get faster access to care. The problem with this promise is that the waiting list is expected to grow even bigger this year. What number it ultimately reaches depends on how many people turn up at an NHS hospital, having held back doing so during the pandemic years. With this variable out of the government’s control (and indeed, we want these people to come forward and seek treatment), it has to focus on capacity within the health service – to make sure patients can be processed and treated at a faster pace.

How big does a bath need to be for 'sex frolicking' to be a possibility? That’s not, if you’d asked anyone six months ago, the question on which the reputational future of the monarchy might be in part held to depend – and yet here we are. A bizarre photograph has been released by the brother of Ghislaine Maxwell in an attempt to discredit Virgina Roberts Guiffre's claims of abuse. The photograph made the front page of the Daily Telegraph, no less. It showed two people, described in the accompanying story as 'acquaintances' of Ghislaine Maxwell, sitting facing each-other, fully clothed, in the bathtub of Maxwell’s old home.

I live in Hammersmith, in west London, which is an area where people seem particularly fond of just running out into the street without looking – which is their prerogative because they are people not machines. 20mph is plenty fast enough and 30mph does feel too fast. And, to be honest, if you could go around somewhere like London, or Manchester, or Birmingham, at a constant 20mph, you'd be absolutely delighted. I do a lot of cycling around London and we can become over obsessed with things like rules, street furniture, signage, traffic lights and so on. They've been doing this with a bike lane near me; it's not particularly well thought out, because you have a two-way road running alongside a two-way bicycle lane, with lots of junctions off it.

'Is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth?'. Brits were asked that question for the first time in the 2021 Census: 93.5 per cent said 'yes', 0.5 per cent said 'no' and the remaining six per cent did not respond. This means that, of those who answered, 0.58 per cent said their gender identity did not match their natal sex. In a debate where tensions are running high on both sides of the Scots border, this data is sorely needed – and is worth digging into. The gender identity question confirms the rise in trans identities among youth. Among 16-24 year olds, one per cent said their gender identity was different from their sex.

Nadhim Zahawi, who has been sacked by Rishi Sunak after days of headlines over his tax affairs, could learn a lot from the example of one of his predecessors as chancellor. Labour chancellor Hugh Dalton entered the House of Commons to deliver his autumn Budget on 10 November 1947. On his way in, he was accosted by a journalist who jocularly asked him what he was about to say. Equally jovially, Dalton confided a couple of sentences on the changes in taxation he would announce within minutes. Before he finished his speech, the tidbits he had disclosed to the nosy hack were in the evening papers and the London stock market was reacting. Dalton’s indiscretion – it was hardly an offence – cost him his front bench career.