Railways

Absolute mayor Andy Burnham wants more devolution and elected mayors. Do voters want that? – Since 2001 there have been 55 referendums on whether to establish the post of elected mayor. Only in 17 cases was there a majority in favour. – The towns and districts keenest on having an elected mayor were Middlesbrough (84% in favour), Croydon (80%) and Mansfield (70%). – The areas least keen on an elected mayor were Guildford (81% against), Bath (79%) and West Devon (77%). Ratings game Which attracts the biggest TV audience in Britain: Wimbledon or the World Cup? – England’s opening match in this World Cup, vs Croatia, attracted a peak audience of 15.4m. England’s quarter-final defeat to France in 2022 had an audience of 19.4m. – This compares with the 8.

The 17.48 from Paddington does not, on first sight, seem exceptional. Over-hard seats, over-bright lights and a scrum at the ticket barriers: none of these is special. The modern Hitachi trains are solid but dull. Only Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s great arching iron roof adds splendour to the scene. But pause by coach L on the daily London to Carmarthen express and you might notice a small miracle. This train is one of the very last in Britain to carry a proper dining car. To its immense credit, GWR, the route’s operator, cooks and serves decent meals on six services a day: three at lunchtime and three in the evening, on its lines from London to Wales and the West Country.

Political frenemies Nigel Farage accepted Robert Jenrick into Reform UK in spite of having previously called him a ‘fraud’ (for boasting about securing hotels for migrants when in government and then campaigning against them in opposition). Some more political make-ups: — David Cameron called Nick Clegg his ‘favourite joke’ before forming a coalition with him in 2010. — Donald Trump chose J.D. Vance as his running-mate in 2024 in spite of Vance having called him ‘America’s Hitler’ and a ‘really bad person’. — George H.W. Bush served as Ronald Reagan’s vice-president between 1981 and 1989 in spite of having previously accused him of ‘voodoo economics’.

How can you ever put your finger on the comfort, the joy, the absurdity, of being English? Not, perhaps, through some attempt at definition: but in a hundred moments linked by that invisible thread, Englishness. Such a moment occurred for me last Friday. The place was Kidderminster in Worcestershire, the occasion the re-opening of the heritage Severn Valley Railway to Bridgnorth in Shropshire, at the lovely station from which the line, formerly Great Western Railway (GWR) and closed by British Rail in the 1960s, runs. If scripture doesn’t specifically mention steam engines, they are implicit in the psalmist’s rapture Let’s not be sentimental about Kidderminster.

It is the most civilised way to travel anywhere in the kingdom. Which is why I am so distraught that the King has cancelled it. This week His Majesty has agreed, reluctantly I can be sure, to decommission his royal train. The decision was announced by the Keeper of the Privy Purse, James Chalmers. Mr Chalmers brings to the Royal Household all the romance and lyricism you’d expect of a chartered accountant who spent 39 years at PwC, including time as something called a Global Assurance Leader. He justified the decision on the basis of the need for ‘modernisation’ and ‘fiscal discipline’. This is not so much letting daylight in upon magic as strangling it with a spreadsheet. It is a tragedy.

Intrepidly, the BBC dared recently to visit Dover, Delaware – source, it implied, of starvation in Gaza. I listened carefully as its State Department correspondent, Tom Bateman, hunted down the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in the state which, he explained, is ‘a corporate haven for those who like privacy’. Brave Tom did not find much, but that only proved to him that ‘The main ingredients of this aid are its politics’. The foundation’s chairman says he is a Christian Zionist which, for the BBC, is almost as bad as saying you are a neo-Nazi. The portentousness aside, it is reasonable to ask tricky questions of the American/Israeli organisation which claims it can solve aid in Gaza.

Domestics policy Brigitte Macron, wife of Emmanuel Macron, was seen to push him in the face as the doors to their plane opened on arrival for a visit to Vietnam. The French President claimed they were just joking. It will kindle memories of awkward moments between Donald Trump and his wife Melania, as well as the incident in June 2019 when police were called to the south London home of Boris Johnson’s then-girlfriend Carrie Symonds after reports of a heated argument, apparently about wine being spilled on a sofa. – It is increasingly hard for politicians to keep their domestic disputes private.

I’m on the 10.45 slow train to Ipswich. It’s not even lunchtime, yet everyone around me is already gorging on food. The corpulent man opposite is posting fistfuls of cheesy Doritos into his gaping maw, washing them down with cheap lager. A woman is noisily chomping her way through a limp burger that reeks of dirty vegetable oil. On my right, I’m greeted by the unmistakable whiff of Greggs meat pie, an unholy stench best described as ‘care-home carpet’. By the time we reach Colchester, the entire carriage sounds and smells like a student refectory, with competing crisp packets and loud slurping noises adding to my sense of despair at the awfulness of humankind. There is no longer much escape from the tyranny of ‘food-on-the-go’.