James Hanson

To paraphrase Mrs Merton’s legendary question to Debbie McGee, ‘what first attracted Nigel Farage to Thai-based billionaire Christopher Harborne?’. Ever since details of the crypto mogul’s £5 million gift to Farage emerged, the Reform leader has seemed remarkably reluctant to answer questions about it. Even during the Makerfield by-election, during which you’d have assumed Farage would have been keen for media exposure, he chose to lay low, appearing only via his own social media accounts and abandoning the weekly press conferences he used to provide for the Westminster press pack.

Proving the old adage that even a broken clock is right twice a day, Sir Sadiq Khan has finally ended up on the right side of a debate. The London mayor has picked a fight with the Soho Society, a ludicrously obstructionist residents group which recently voted to lobby Westminster City Council against all new licensing applications for bars and restaurants, including renewals. It’s hard to think of a more obscene example of Nimbyism than this. If New York is the city that never sleeps, London is the city that is comatose by midnight It prompted Khan to post this on social media: ‘Complaining about nightlife when you *checks notes* choose to live in Soho is like living in South Kensington and complaining about the museums. Or moving to Hackney and grumbling about creatives.

As if the Labour party hasn’t inflicted enough damage on London, Dawn Butler, the staggeringly inept MP for Brent East, is considering a future mayoral bid. God help us. Even by the appallingly low standards of London Labour – the party that gave us Ken Livingstone and Sadiq Khan – the prospect of a Dawn Butler mayoralty is enough to make me start planning my escape beyond the M25. You would hope that Butler’s track record would disqualify her from serious consideration for her party’s candidacy. And yet, this being London Labour, her distinctive brand of hard left bile might actually work in her favour For those fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with Butler, let’s consider some of her greatest hits.

There’s a slight feeling of 1990 to the way the Tories are selling the early local election results. Back then, party chairman Kenneth Baker managed to spin victory into defeat. By concentrating the media’s attention on Conservative holds in Wandsworth and Westminster, he turned perceptions of a bad night for the government on its head. It was a masterclass in political PR. Kemi Badenoch is entitled to feel a measure of relief. But relief is where it should end. The party’s gains have come exclusively at the expense of Labour during a period of record unpopularity for Sir Keir Starmer Fast forward 36 years, and his modern equivalent Kevin Hollinrake is attempting to pull off the same trick.

I’ll say this for the RMT: they are, at least, a trade union that has long since given up the pretense of caring about the wider public good. While the insufferable junior doctors pretend their money-grabbing militancy is somehow an act of great benevolence towards patients, the rail workers’ union is so transparently a glorified protection racket that it’s almost refreshing. Hence the absurdity of a London tube driver set to earn £80,000 for a role that should have been automated years ago. If there is one silver lining to this lunacy it is that, in the long-term, the RMT is signing its own death warrant The RMT has always been this way.

If Sir Ed Davey’s stunts were ever funny, the joke has long since worn off. At the Lib Dem spring conference this weekend, he strode onto stage wearing sunglasses to the tune of Boney M’s ‘Daddy Cool’ in a lame attempt to parody Emmanuel Macron’s recent appearance at Davos. After a typically forgettable speech, Davey was then filmed performing a choreographed dance routine to Chappell Roan’s Gen Z pop hit ‘Hot to Go!’. And to think this was the party of Gladstone and Lloyd George. But the most embarrassing moment of all for the Lib Dem leader came on Sunday, when the latest Ipsos poll showed his party is now polling in single figures.

Not for the first time, Nigel Farage has hit a nerve. At a rally in Birmingham, the Reform UK leader took aim at an increasingly sacred cow in modern Britain: working from home. He called for ‘an attitudinal change to hard work rather than work-life balance’ and claimed ‘people aren’t more productive working from home, it’s a load of nonsense – they’re more productive being with other fellow human beings and working as part of a team.’ Cue a social media meltdown. What’s curious about the backlash to Farage’s comments is that it comes from all quarters. The influential right-wing commentator Mahyar Tousi called the comments ‘100 per cent false and out of touch with the 21st century workforce’.

The Tory defections to Reform are continuing to mount up, with former home secretary Suella Braverman the latest to cross the floor this morning. Braverman’s defection has been hailed as a coup by Nigel Farage, who pointed out she is ‘somebody who’s reached high office in the cabinet.’ But there is an important question the Reform leader keeps avoiding: why aren’t these ex-Tories holding by-elections?  Nigel Farage’s superpower is the impression that he’s not like any other politician. That he sticks to his guns, tells it like it is, and acts on principle. And yet on this issue, he is being nakedly hypocritical As Ukip leader in 2014, Farage rightly insisted both Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless trigger by-elections after crossing the floor.

In the time honoured tradition of underwhelming Christmas gifts, surely none is quite so derisory as the government’s Christmas bonus for pensioners. Many recipients may not even notice it. A £10 payment by the Department for Work and Pensions, this tax-free bauble is sent to every state pensioner in the first week of December, plus those on carer’s allowance or pension credit. There is no fanfare from ministers, no letter from the DWP, it just quietly appears in the bank accounts of around 18 million people each and every year.

‘Parents shouldn’t be out of pocket by setting their kids up for school’. So boasted Downing Street, as the government touts its expansion of ‘free’ breakfast clubs. Except, as with everything the state provides, they’re not ‘free’. They are paid for by taxpayers. Call me a selfish, hard-hearted miser if you wish, but why should I pay for someone else’s child to eat breakfast? Isn’t that, perish the thought, the parent’s role? Call me a selfish, hard-hearted miser if you wish, but why should I pay for someone else’s child to eat breakfast? Isn’t that, perish the thought, the parent’s role? Not that we should be surprised by Labour’s latest example of nanny-statism. The government also plans to introduce supervised tooth-brushing in schools.

‘Don’t let Donald Trump’s Britain become Nigel Farage’s Britain’. So spluttered a typically hyperbolic Sir Ed Davey during his Lib Dem conference speech yesterday. In a further sign that the Reform UK leader lives rent-free inside the minds of liberal Britain, Davey made a series of wild accusations about Farage – including that he wants to privatise the NHS, roll back gun laws and ‘tacitly support’ racism and misogyny. In response, Farage accused the Lib Dem leader of being ‘obsessed’ with him and offered to pay for a psychiatrist.

You almost have to admire the RMT – they are a trade union from central casting. From Bob Crow to Mick Lynch, their leaders have been the baldest, the bolshiest and the most Bolshevik of the lot – and, credit where it’s due, the most effective. How else can you explain the insanity of a tube driver in London earning about £64,000 a year for a job that could be automated at a stroke? We shouldn’t be surprised that the RMT is rolling the dice on industrial action next month Into this madness, step forward Eddie Dempsey. Younger and less follically challenged than his predecessors, he nonetheless shares their appetite for downing tools.

Our economy is on the rocks, legal and illegal immigration remains out of control, public services are creaking, and a looming debt crisis is on the horizon. But fear not. Labour has announced its big idea for turning around Britain’s fortunes: votes for children. It is naive to assume that 16-year-olds will be more attracted to Starmer’s technocratic government than Reform's radicalism Around 1.5 million 16 and 17-year-olds will be able to vote at the next general election, under government plans to lower the voting age. Keir Starmer says older teenagers are 'old enough to go out to work, they are old enough to pay taxes' and, so, they are old enough to vote.