Reform

Scots may be getting vaccinated against Covid, but they already have the highest rate of immunity to the appeal of Nigel Farage to be found anywhere in the UK. So it was not a particular surprise that Farage today stayed away from the launch of the Scottish offshoot of his new entity, Reform UK. Instead it was left to party chairman Richard Tice to unveil the identity of the leader of Reform UK, Scotland. The sitting MSP Michelle Ballantyne, who stood unsuccessfully for the leadership of the Scottish Conservatives less than a year ago before going independent, has become the Scottish leader of Reform UK, without needing to win a single vote. The good news for the party is that Mrs Ballantyne came over as sensible, credible and inoffensive, not unlike Mr Tice himself.

Former editor of The Spectator and Daily Telegraph Charles Moore is tipped to become chairman of the BBC. Despite being proactively encouraged to put himself forward for the job of director-general earlier this year, Moore made clear he would not be applying for the role. Firstly, he didn’t think he’d get it, writing in his Spectator notebook that he is ‘not a woman’ with ‘no plans to become one’ and ‘under the BBC’s diversity rules, uniformity of gender is required’. Secondly, the job didn’t appeal. He wrote ‘bureaucracy is the enemy of creativity. The BBC can only be a bureaucracy.

I imagine that in recommending Philip Hammond and Ken Clarke for peerages, Boris Johnson sees himself in engaging in a Tory healing process. 'I may have kicked them out of the parliamentary party,' he is saying, 'but let bygones be bygones – I’m big enough to honour my former enemies.' And of course, unlike David Gauke and Dominic Grieve, neither had the temerity to stand against the Conservative party in the general election, so it is some kind of reward for not complaining too bitterly when punished for disloyalty. But is that really the message that Boris needs to be handing out regarding the House of Lords – underlining its role as a place where Prime Minister’s can do politics through patronage?