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The best way to assess Boris’s trade deal with the EU is to look at who’s for it and who’s agin it. Despite the bad blood between the two of them, Nigel Farage has given the agreement a magnanimous, if cautious, welcome. While Farage is wisely reserving final judgment until he’s read the small print, … Read more
They love their NATO-style acronyms, don’t they? How many times during this pandemic have we been informed ominously that the Prime Minister has convened an emergency meeting of COBRA? Back on March 3, as coronavirus was coming to be seen as a clear and present danger, I observed in this column: ‘COBRA sounds like something … Read more
This is the season when newspaper columnists are expected to pull on their Old Moore outfits and have a stab at predicting the year ahead. Forgive me, but I opted out of this hackneyed tradition years ago, even though I’d never really taken it seriously. No matter how outrageous or spectacularly silly my forecasts, they … Read more
With Christmas approaching, I couldn’t help wondering how The Nativity might have turned out if coronavirus had been around back then. The Bible would probably have recorded it something like this… And lo, Caesar Borisius decreed that a mass vaccination for the pestilence which is called Co-Vid should take place among all the citizenry of … Read more
Grim Reaper Matt Hancock prefaced his Commons announcement of yet another ruinous lockdown in London, Hertfordshire and Essex with a blood-curdling warning about a new super strain of coronavirus which has just been identified by ‘the science’. Presumably, this ingenious variant only attacks people in pubs not gyms, and restaurants not shops. Even so, it’s … Read more
Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance has been forced to admit that there’s no evidence locking down pubs and restaurants saved a single life or stopped the spread of Covid. Vallance, one of the Two Ronnies of Doom, also confessed to MPs that the 10pm curfew was plucked out of thin air. It was a ‘policy … Read more
Boris Johnson is promising Tory MPs all kinds of concessions to head off a revolt over the latest Covid restrictions. The lockdown will be kept under constant review. Low-risk areas may be shifted from Tier Three to Tier Two. The rules could be relaxed mid-December and abandoned altogether by the end of January. Believe that … Read more
The headline in the Mail on Sunday just about summed it all up: ‘It’s Nut Nut not Nut Nuts!’ Eh? I’m sorry, just run that by me again. Apparently, Boris Johnson’s girlfriend is known disparagingly as ‘Princess Nut Nut’ not ‘Princess Nut Nuts’, writes our political editor. On social media, ‘allies of Dominic Cummings’ use … Read more
Chad Hanging and Brit Limey are alive and well and working for America’s ABC News. This column’s fictional anchorman and London bureau chief have been reporting on Britain’s reaction to the U.S. election. On Saturday night, ABC announced that: ‘Fireworks lit up the night sky over London, England, after Joe Biden was characterised to be … Read more
Like Peter Finch’s deranged newsreader in the 1976 movie Network, Shelley Tasker is mad as hell and isn’t going to take it any more. As England was pitchforked into another debilitating lockdown, she set up an amplifier on the steps of Truro Cathedral, grabbed a microphone and began telling passers-by what’s ‘really going on’ in … Read more