Nigel farage

Home The temperature reached 38.1ºC at Kew Gardens, Surrey. In the West Midlands a wildfire at Stourbridge burnt down 19 houses and damaged 18. The government sent out a loud siren sound and a message to all mobiles in England and Wales warning of a ‘very high risk of wildfires’. So-called Statutory Guidelines temporarily banned the sale of disposable barbecues. More than 8,000 South East Water customers in Kent found supplies disrupted. A burst water main cut off travel by road between Heathrow’s terminals. Two passengers were seriously injured when three carriages of a train from London Victoria to Eastbourne were derailed and fell onto their sides near Lewes. A train from Southend to London Liverpool Street was derailed at Wickford.

I was hacked by the Chinese a few years ago. Security at News UK, where I was employed on the Sunday Times, told around 20 journalists that our emails had been compromised. An agency of the Chinese state was searching for information on our coverage of Chinese issues, including Beijing’s crushing of Hong Kong and the decision to sanction members of parliament. To be honest, I’d have been pretty offended if I hadn’t been on the list. Frankly, if the Chinese want to know what I know, they can take out a subscription to The Spectator, just as they could have bought a copy of the Sunday Times. But this is what you expect from the Chinese, isn’t it?

Reason, David Hume noted, is a slave of the passions. Arguments, especially political crusades, are often rooted in emotional responses, with the evidence assembled to justify a position which is heartfelt but often wrongheaded. So it is with the cry, from politicians, for more steps to be taken to safeguard the personal security of politicians. The killing of Ann Widdecombe, like the deaths of Jo Cox and David Amess, has generated new demands for action, and legislation, to protect those in public life from risk and danger. The transparent nobility of Ann’s life and the grotesque tragedy of her death make it emotionally difficult to resist the call for strengthened perimeters around our politicians.

The man from Reform had barely sat down at our table at the French bistro when he leant forward conspiratorially and asked: ‘What’s Boris up to?’ The suspicion that Boris Johnson, Britain’s 55th premier, must be up to something is a familiar one. For the first time in several years, however, the question is interesting. And the fact that Reform is raising it gives a small insight into the current state of politics. The query came just hours after Johnson had taken to Instagram to mark the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum, the defining moment of his career and of our politics since. The 17.4 million voters who backed the Leave campaign were right to do so, he said, before going on to hail the freedoms of Brexit.

Every twist in the winding road of our politics brings a latest thing to say. These wisdoms usually survive a season or two before succumbing to the new thing to say, which often asserts the opposite. This summer we have ‘Britain is moving into an era of multi-party politics’. Allow me, therefore, to leap ahead with my candidate for its successor: ‘Reports of the death of two-party politics are greatly exaggerated.’ I don’t say our current governing party and principal opposition must always be the two parties in question. Labour may be dying. The Tories may be showing signs of life. In both cases I fervently hope so. But whether or not these remain our two options in elections to come, the tendency will always be for the choice to boil down to two.