Gus Carter

OK, it might sound a little fanciful, but hear me out. I think there could just be a way for Boris to scrape back in to power. Some Johnson loyalists in Westminster think that whoever replaces him will implode, that there could be another leadership race before the 2024 election and that Boris could run and win. That seems like wishful thinking. Instead, I'd suggest he plays the long game. It's a little convoluted and involves quite a few what-ifs – but if anyone can do it, it’s the great greased piglet himself.  Step one: take over the Evening Standard. The ailing London paper has been in trouble for some time. It recorded a £14 million loss last year even after the majority of commuters returned post-Covid.

It is a great and ancient right of all freeborn Englishmen, stretching back far beyond the reaches of our recorded history. From Magna Carta to the Glorious Revolution, it has been woven into each of the defining constitutional moments of the British story, a principle bled and died for on the battlefields of Europe. It is, of course, the right to make a tit of yourself. Whitehall’s Stop Brexit Man has been the most vociferous pursuer of that right in recent years. Steve Bray, with his Brussels blue top hat and shouty megaphone demeanour, loves to make a tit of himself. He marches around Westminster barking inanities at any unsuspecting Tory MP, usually something demented about Russia and Brexit.

Two years ago, UAE citizens were barred from entering Israel. No longer. The inaugural Emirates flight touched down in Tel Aviv last week, a Boeing 777 carrying 335 passengers. For much of the 20th century, the only thing that the Middle East could agree on was the destruction of the Jewish state. But attitudes are changing. The purported reason is the so-called Abraham Accords, signed in 2020 after Donald Trump decided to solve the seemingly intractable problem of the Middle East. If Don the Dealmaker couldn’t do it, who could? Seven decades of antagonism had failed, the White House argued, and the Palestinian cause seemed as troubled as ever, so why not try a different approach?

Last night, a Boeing 767 that was supposed to fly 130 asylum seekers to Rwanda returned to Spain without a single passenger on board. Throughout the day, the number of people planned for that flight had been whittled down by multiple legal challenges. Then, minutes before take-off, the European Court of Human Rights made an injunction stopping an Iraqi man known as KN from being taken to Central Africa because, it said, he faced ‘a real risk of irreversible harm’. The question some are asking is why the Home Secretary didn’t wait. There is supposed to be a broader challenge at the High Court next month which would, perhaps, have dealt with Strasbourg’s concerns – namely, that there was no legal mechanism for asylum seekers to return to the UK.

I’m starting to get a bit annoyed about partygate. Well no, that’s a lie. I’m angry in theory. On paper I’m fuming. In real life? Meh. This whole saga has trundled on for so long now I’ve just stopped caring. I’m probably annoyed about something else. Train timetables or maybe the fact that broccoli is £1.60 in M&S. Given how miserable the rest of us were during lockdown, those making the rules should really have done the polite thing and followed them. But then when you read the details of ‘partygate’, you can’t help but think that they weren't really enjoying themselves. A Colin the Caterpillar cake in between meetings? ‘Wine time Fridays’?

Sadiq Khan doesn’t seem to know what his job is. The Mayor of London announced on Thursday morning that he was setting up a review to examine whether cannabis should be legalised. Just a few hours later, the Home Secretary Priti Patel reminded him that ‘the mayor has no powers to legalise drugs’. Duh. Labour didn’t seem that happy either. Yvette Cooper also gave Khan a ticking off, saying that the national party already had a policy and, no, they wouldn’t be pushing for legalisation. So please be quiet Sadiq. But we all know what the mayor was really up to. Sadiq Khan wants attention. He wants to be a national politician by using a local politician’s platform.

Just how bad is it for Boris Johnson? In some ways it's difficult to tell, this is a prime minister who seems almost unable to exist without a crisis.  But last night's new Covid rules — mixed up with the unending stories about Downing Street parties in the depths of lockdown — seem to have ushered in a different level of Westminster discontent. It's more the timing than anything else. On Tuesday morning, the Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab said 'We don’t think that Plan B is required'. On Wednesday evening the PM implemented Plan B. What happened?  During those intervening 36 hours, the data on Omicron only seemed to have improved.