The Curse of Cursive

People of a certain age will remember the great educational obsession with joined-up writing. Or, to give it its proper grandiose title, cursive script. Schools treated it as though civilisation itself rested upon the ability to turn the alphabet into a sort of continuous decorative hosepipe.

An astonishing amount of time was devoted to it. Sheets of lined paper. Endless loops. Pen licences awarded with all the solemnity of a military decoration. Children who could barely explain basic grammar were nevertheless expected to produce handwriting resembling a peace treaty signed aboard a battleship in 1919.

What always strikes me is that nobody actually reads joined-up writing voluntarily.

Books are printed. Newspapers are printed. Shakespeare is printed. Even medieval monks, sitting in freezing stone rooms inhaling candle fumes for thirty years, generally tried to make individual letters distinguishable from one another. Humanity did not spend centuries developing printing presses only for schools to decide that the pinnacle of communication was making every word resemble a set of cursive hieroglyphs discovered inside a damp pyramid.

I did a little research into the history of cursive script recently, which illuminated me somewhat. Not, obviously, in the sense of illuminated script, involving gold leaf, decorated capitals and monks slowly going blind beside candles, but intellectually.

The strange thing is that cursive script originally had a perfectly sensible purpose. If you were writing with a quill or dip pen in 1720, constantly lifting the nib from the page interrupted the ink flow, caught the paper and increased blotting. Keeping the pen moving in one flowing motion was quicker and smoother. Fine. Entirely rational.

The problem is that schools carried on teaching it with near-religious intensity long after the world that created it had vanished.

By the time we were all painstakingly joining our letters in the 1970s and 80s, the country was watching colour television, flying in jumbo jets and listening to music recorded electronically, yet children were still being trained in a handwriting system optimised for a man in a powdered wig writing shipping invoices by candlelight with a feather.

Nobody ever seemed to pause and ask whether this made any sense.

Mind you, I am not entirely innocent here. In my 30s I became mildly obsessed with calligraphy and used to write entries in ship's logbooks in perfect Gothic script, which probably made routine navigational observations look as though they had been copied from a 14th century monastery shortly before the arrival of the plague.

But Gothic script, importantly, is not cursive. Quite the opposite. Gothic lettering positively revels in separating everything into sharp, formal, individually constructed characters. It takes ages to write and was never pretending otherwise. Decorative, ceremonial and faintly intimidating, certainly, but at least honest about the fact it belonged to another age.

My father, meanwhile, fully embraced cursive script. Besides owning a typewriter that produced it, he also used peacock blue ink in a fountain pen for his logbook entries. It was his mark. Beautiful flowing cursive handwriting in vivid blue ink, looking faintly as though a Victorian shipping clerk had somehow wandered into the late twentieth century and been handed radar and diesel engines.

In fact, before going to sea, he had briefly been a bank clerk and had been taught copperplate writing properly. That was still considered a serious commercial skill then. A neat hand implied reliability, competence and trustworthiness. Banks, after all, were places where one badly written figure could accidentally move the equivalent of a semi-detached house from one ledger to another.

I rather inherited that tendency myself. Until I nearly ripped my right thumb off in a motorcycle accident, my handwriting was genuinely rather beautiful. Not elegant in the copperplate sense perhaps, but neat, controlled and readable. Afterwards it deteriorated into something that looks as though a startled chicken has walked through wet ink during a minor electrical incident.

Which perhaps rather undermines the old moral assumptions surrounding handwriting. Schools treated penmanship almost as a reflection of character. Yet in reality, good handwriting often comes down to mechanics, muscle control and whether your thumb remains broadly attached to your hand.

And perhaps that is partly why the whole thing lingered for so long. There is something undeniably elegant, personal and individual about good handwriting. Mechanical printing may be clearer, but it carries none of the fingerprints of the person behind it. You can almost tell the era and character of somebody from the way they wrote.

The original technical problem behind cursive script had nevertheless been solved decades earlier. The biro existed. The typewriter existed. Photocopiers existed. Word processors were already appearing. Yet the educational system clung to cursive script with astonishing determination, as though the collapse of joined-up handwriting would somehow lead directly to barbarism.

And schools became oddly moralistic about it. Good handwriting implied discipline, intelligence and upright character. Bad handwriting suggested idleness and possible future criminality. Meanwhile the medical profession had already evolved a written language entirely incomprehensible to the human eye. Prescriptions written by hand probably accounted for a measurable percentage of accidental drug-induced deaths over the years, with pharmacists effectively working as part-time cryptographers.

That, in many ways, summarises the entire joined-up writing obsession. A society becoming so attached to the appearance of effort and tradition that it starts deliberately reintroducing the very problems technology had just solved.

Most adults eventually drift into a compromise anyway. Half print, half scribble. The natural human equilibrium between speed and legibility. Nobody, outside perhaps wedding invitations and threatening letters from solicitors, actually writes in full cursive script anymore.

And now, of course, children type.

Which means future generations will probably regard joined-up writing the same way we regard deportment lessons, hat etiquette and ceremonial sword drills. One of those strange rituals people defended fiercely long after its original purpose had quietly died.

Still, somewhere in Britain there is probably a retired headmistress who firmly believes society began collapsing the moment children stopped joining their letters properly. She almost certainly writes Christmas cards in green ink using a fountain pen that leaks slightly, and regards the self-checkout at Tesco as the first stage of civilisational breakdown.

Nigel Farage's Real Victory Was Never Number 10

Today, I find myself returning to a theory that I had previously abandoned because it seemed too cynical, too tidy, perhaps even a little conspiratorial.

What if Nigel Farage’s real purpose was never to become Prime Minister?

The real question is this: why does a politician who claims to want to govern repeatedly behave as though the standards expected of a future Prime Minister do not matter?

A £5 million personal gift from a billionaire donor. A remarkably lucrative role promoting a gold bullion company. Questions over declarations. Persistent criticism of his parliamentary attendance and engagement with Clacton. Now even talk that a standards investigation could, depending on its outcome, lead to a recall petition.

None of these episodes is, by itself, politically fatal. But together they do not look like the careful, disciplined conduct of someone methodically building public trust.

A serious contender for Downing Street normally spends years demonstrating competence, reliability and judgement. Every scandal matters because every scandal chips away at the trust needed to persuade floating voters.

Farage appears to operate under different rules.

Perhaps that is because his political capital does not depend on persuading the broad middle. It depends on retaining a sufficiently large and loyal core who treat almost every criticism as confirmation that he is challenging the establishment.

If that is true, scandal is not necessarily fatal. It becomes a running cost.

He may lose moderate supporters around the edges, but if the core remains intact he keeps exactly what makes him valuable: the ability to frighten his opponents.

That changes the calculation.

The conventional assumption is that Reform succeeds only if it forms a government. But that may misunderstand where its real influence lies.

If your objective is to reduce regulation, cut taxes, weaken environmental obligations and shrink the state, it is irrelevant whether those policies are delivered by Reform, the Conservatives or Labour. The vehicle matters less than the destination.

So a wealthy donor does not necessarily need Farage in Number 10. They simply need Labour and the Conservatives to believe that unless they move in Reform’s direction, Reform will continue taking votes from them.

In that scenario, Reform becomes less a government in waiting than a permanent pressure group with parliamentary representation.

Its success is measured not by the number of ministers it appoints, but by how far it can drag everyone else’s policies towards its own.

And to some extent, that has already happened.

The Conservatives have become Reform Lite, forever hardening their language and policies in the hope of recovering voters they lost to Farage. They present this as conviction, but it increasingly looks like panic dressed up as principle.

Labour has not been immune either. Whether by conviction or electoral necessity, Labour under Starmer has adopted tougher positions on several issues where Reform has been influential: asylum, welfare and fiscal restraint among them.

Shabana Mahmood’s stance on refugees is not merely a change of tone. It is a hardening of policy.

That matters because it shows Farage’s influence working even without power. He does not need to sit in government if government already feels obliged to answer questions framed by him.

But two things may now complicate the model.

The first is Burnham. If Labour under Burnham can speak plainly to insecure voters without accepting Farage’s premises, Labour could move out of Reform’s gravitational field.

The second is Prosper UK. A serious centre-right movement rejecting populist Toryism is precisely the fishbone in Farage’s throat. It does not need to win over his core supporters. It only needs to give respectable centre-right voters somewhere else to go.

That is the threat to Farage: not that his believers abandon him, but that everyone around them stops being frightened of him. 

Farage’s danger lies in his ability to define the battlefield. His weakness lies in the possibility that others stop fighting on it. If Burnham can reach insecure voters without parroting Reform, and Prosper UK can offer the centre right a home that is not built from grievance, Farage’s leverage shrinks.

He can keep his loyal core. He probably will. But a loyal core is not the same as national dominance, it is only powerful while others panic around it.

Perhaps I was wrong to abandon my original theory. The real measure of Farage’s success was never whether he became Prime Minister, it was whether Britain changed because he was here.

The Price of Patriotism

Kemi Badenoch has discovered a £4.7bn gap in Labour's defence investment plan and is behaving as though she has uncovered the political scandal of the century.

She hasn't. The remaining £4.7bn is not "missing". It has not disappeared behind a filing cabinet. It is a funding decision for the autumn Budget.

The truly astonishing part is the identity of the messenger.

This is the party that spent 14 years hollowing out Britain's armed forces while wrapping itself in the flag. The party that cut troop numbers, delayed procurement, presided over chronic cost overruns and left equipment programmes years behind schedule. It also left behind an economy weakened by Brexit, a tax base that grew more slowly than it otherwise would have done, and public finances under severe strain.

Having created so much of the problem, the Conservatives have now reinvented themselves as guardians of sound finance. It takes a spectacular lack of self-awareness.

Then comes the inevitable slogan: "We're spending it all on welfare."

Fine. Which welfare?

The state pension? Disability benefits? Housing support? Universal Credit? Carers? Low-paid working families?

If Kemi Badenoch wants £5bn found, she should have the courage to tell us precisely who is going to lose it. "Welfare" is not an answer. It is a convenient label designed to avoid saying "pensioners", "disabled people" or "working families".

The real question is not whether Britain needs another £5bn for defence. It probably does.

The real question is the opportunity cost.

Every pound spent on defence has to come from somewhere. There are only four options: higher taxes, lower spending elsewhere, more borrowing, or stronger economic growth. Those are the choices. There is no fifth option called "common sense".

Britain's security is a national responsibility. Defence protects our territory, our infrastructure, our trade, our supply chains, our businesses and our accumulated wealth.

So who should contribute most?

The answer is surely those with the greatest ability to contribute, those with the greatest financial stake in Britain's stability, and those least likely to bear the physical burden.

That is not class warfare. It is proportional responsibility.

Indeed, if Britain's loudest millionaire and billionaire patriots spend their lives telling us how patriotic they are, this is their moment. Patriotism is not measured by the size of the flag on your lapel, the volume of your speeches, or the frequency with which you accuse others of lacking it.

Patriotism is measured by what you are prepared to contribute when your country genuinely needs you.

Recently Badenoch accused Bridget Phillipson of being a "spiteful class warrior". Yet when Britain needs more money for defence, her instinct is not to ask more of those with the broadest shoulders, but to look down the income scale instead.

If there is class politics at work here, it is not coming from those arguing that contribution should reflect ability to pay.

It is coming from those who instinctively protect wealth while presenting cuts for everyone else as patriotism.

This is the same political trick we have seen time and again. Promise easy answers. Avoid difficult choices. Wave the flag. Hope nobody notices that the arithmetic has quietly left the room.

Serious defence policy requires serious honesty. It means telling voters what security costs and explaining, openly, how it will be paid for. Slogans about "welfare" are not a funding strategy. They are simply a way of changing the subject.

Badenoch offers none of that.

Instead, she performs the oldest trick in politics: create the mess, leave the mess, then express theatrical outrage that the people clearing it up have not yet finished.

If her answer is that the poorest should fund Britain's defence while the wealthiest remain comfortably insulated, then this is not patriotism.

It is austerity dressed in camouflage.

If others are expected to risk their lives, the very least the wealthy can risk is a little more of their wealth.

Revolving Doors

Politics used to be sold to us as public service. That was the theory, at least. A slightly noble calling in which a person gave up the comforts of ordinary life, endured public criticism, and devoted themselves to the improvement of the nation. There may even have been a brass band involved somewhere.

These days, for a highlighted few, it looks more like a conversion process. You go in with one sort of career, spend a few years acquiring contacts, status, access, ministerial language and a working knowledge of how the machine operates, then emerge on the other side as someone with a market value you did not previously possess.

Take my former MP, Luke Hall. Before politics, he worked in retail. He worked for Lidl from the age of 18, became manager of the Yate store, and later became an area manager for Farmfoods. That is a perfectly respectable career. No sneering required. Britain runs on people who can get staff rotas done, keep shelves stocked, and stop the frozen peas becoming a small inland glacier.

Then came Parliament. He became Conservative MP for Thornbury and Yate in 2015, served in ministerial roles, and left the Commons when Parliament was dissolved in 2024. Again, none of that is improper. It is how representative democracy works, or how it is supposed to work when it is not being used as a holding pen for think-tank alumni and people who say “delivery” every six minutes.

But after leaving Parliament, Hall took a role with National Grid as Head of External Affairs and Stakeholder Engagement. The official appointments advice noted that National Grid has a significant contractual relationship with government and is regulated by Ofgem, although it also said there was no direct overlap with his Department for Education ministerial brief.

And there, really, is the smell of the thing.

I am not accusing him of corruption. That would be unfair, unevidenced and legally unwise, which is a poor combination. The point is not that a rule was necessarily broken. The point is that the public can see the shape of the transaction. A man goes into politics with one kind of career and comes out with another: external affairs, stakeholder engagement, public policy, government-facing communication. Not wires and pylons. Not the engineering of the National Grid. The navigation of influence.

To be fair, quite a few Conservative MPs did not exactly discover business after politics. Many came from it in the first place: finance, law, property, consultancy, corporate management - the old familiar Westminster grazing pasture. For them, the move after office can look less like a dramatic career change and more like returning to the mothership with a better pass, a fuller contacts book and a working knowledge of which ministerial door needs knocking on.

Labour has its own risks, of course. Nobody should get too misty-eyed and imagine Labour MPs are all still emerging from pit villages with a union card in one hand and a flask of tea in the other. But Labour MPs have historically been more likely to come from public services, teaching, unions, local government, charities and political organising, while Conservative MPs have more often had business and legal backgrounds. That does not make one side morally pure and the other wicked. It simply changes the shape of the temptation.

With some Conservatives, politics can amplify an existing business network. With some Labour MPs, especially after time in government, politics can create one. Either way, the danger is the same. Public office becomes a private asset.

And yes, in recent years this has looked more Conservative than Labour. But that is partly because the Conservatives were in power for fourteen years, which gave them a much larger herd of former ministers, advisers and connected Westminster wildlife heading for the private sector. A long spell in government creates a long departure lounge. The more people you have standing near the levers of power, the more people later discover that lever-proximity has a very pleasant day rate.

But Labour should not get smug. The revolving door is not painted blue. It simply opens most easily for whoever has recently been nearest the machine. If Labour spends years in office, some of its own people will discover the same mysterious gravitational pull towards consultancies, advisory roles, public affairs firms and “stakeholder engagement”, which is often what lobbying calls itself after a shower and a LinkedIn makeover.

So this is not a party-political purity test. It is a power test. The Conservatives have supplied more of the recent examples because they supplied most of the recent government. But the temptation belongs to office itself. Power creates access. Access creates value. Value then seeks a salary, preferably one large enough to require the word “package”.

That is why Hall is such a neat local example. He did not arrive in Parliament as an energy specialist, infrastructure expert or public affairs grandee. He came from retail management. Respectable enough, but not obviously a route into the upper reaches of National Grid stakeholder engagement. Parliament supplied the missing ingredient: status, access, fluency in government, and the faint scent of usefulness to people who need to understand how Whitehall and Westminster work.

Local gossip about what people thought of him before politics may be satisfying, but it is not the foundation of the argument. People are disparaged by former colleagues for all sorts of reasons: competence, ambition, politics, personality, jealousy, or because they once reorganised a stockroom with the quiet messianic energy of a district manager on a leadership course. Anecdote is colour, not proof.

The documented career arc is stronger. Retail. Parliament. Ministerial office. Then a public affairs role with a major regulated company. Perfectly legal, by all appearances. But legality is a low bar. It is the political equivalent of saying the MOT tester did not actually fall through the floorpan.

What matters is what this does to public trust. Voters look at these moves and begin to think the whole system is built this way. They stop believing politicians are primarily there to serve. They start believing they are there to accumulate future value. And once that belief takes hold, every speech sounds like networking, every committee sounds like auditioning, and every ministerial announcement comes with an invisible LinkedIn update hovering somewhere in the background.

That is bad for democracy. Not because every politician is bent. They are not. Many are diligent, serious and probably underpaid for the abuse they take. But a system does not need universal corruption to lose legitimacy. It only needs enough examples of respectable self-advancement to convince the public that the game is rigged politely.

The modern scandal is not the brown envelope. It is the business card.

Not a bloke in a trilby leaving cash under a park bench. A former minister taking a stakeholder role, a consultancy, a directorship, an advisory post, all signed off by the correct process, all technically within the rules, all accompanied by grave assurances that no lobbying will occur.

And perhaps no lobbying will occur. Perhaps every rule will be followed to the letter. Perhaps everyone involved will behave impeccably, and the whole thing will be as pure as a freshly wiped whiteboard in a corporate awayday breakout room.

But the public still sees what has happened. Public office has created private value. That may not be corruption. But if democracy depends on trust, it is still a very expensive way of losing it.

Naughty Me

I am very naughty.

There. Best to get the confession out of the way early, before the forecourt clergy arrive with their laminated commandments.

Because I collect cars from auction sites across the UK, and auction cars are almost invariably handed over with about five miles of fuel in them. Not five miles in the reassuring sense. Five miles in the “you may reach the petrol station, provided you do not use the heater, indicators or hope” sense. 

So the first stop is usually a fuel station. I have to fill the thing up, pay with a corporate fuel card, and enter the registration number. Which, naturally, I do not know. I may have owned the car for all of twelve minutes. It is not my cherished classic. It is just that day’s anonymous lump of depreciating metal, acquired from somewhere damp beside the M6.

So I take a photograph of the registration plate.

With my mobile phone.

On a fuel station forecourt.

Cue sharp intake of breath from the forecourt priesthood.

Yesterday, inevitably, I was challenged.

Not for smoking. Not for spilling fuel. Not for juggling naked flames beside Pump Four while humming Ride of the Valkyries. I was challenged because I took a photograph of a registration number, so that I could enter it correctly into the corporate fuel card system.

Being a difficult old sod, I attempted to argue the statistics.

This went exactly as well as you would expect.

I explained, calmly and no doubt with the radiant charm for which I am justly famous, that the probability of a modern mobile phone igniting petrol vapour during a quick number plate photograph is not zero in the philosophical sense, but is statistically indistinguishable from zero in the observed world. After decades of mobile phone use and billions of refuelling events, verified examples appear to be notable mainly for their absence.

Computer said no.

I tried the distinction between theoretical hazard and practical risk.

Computer said no.

I raised the point that static electricity, smoking, distraction and driving off with the hose attached are all rather more plausible hazards.

Computer said no, possibly louder.

And to be fair, the attendant was not there to debate Bayesian probability with a man collecting an auction car with four miles of fuel range and a corporate card requiring a registration number he had owned for less time than most people spend choosing a sandwich. The attendant had a rule. The rule had a sign. The sign had management behind it. And management, as we know, is where nuance goes to be laminated.

So I lost. Not because the statistics were wrong, but because statistics are of limited use against a laminated instruction. And this is where the signage becomes faintly comic.

My phone is banned because it contains a battery and is not certified for use in a hazardous atmosphere. Fair enough, as far as the paperwork goes. But the same forecourt admits petrol cars with hot exhausts, tired wiring, relays, fuel pumps and vapour. It admits diesels, hybrids, motorcycles, elderly vans, and EVs which are, among other things, huge mobile batteries with seats, cupholders and finance agreements.

That does not mean EVs are especially dangerous. They are not. It means the forecourt is already full of managed risks. My phone is not unique because it is uniquely dangerous. It is unique because it is visible, easy to ban, and easy to blame.

That, really, is the point. The “no phones” rule is not wholly irrational. Petrol vapour deserves respect. Forecourts are not risk-free environments. Simple rules have their place, particularly where hurried customers, volatile liquids and mild stupidity occasionally gather in the same postcode. But the rule treats all phone use as though it were the same act: making a call at the pump, scrolling Facebook while the tank overflows, or briefly photographing a number plate so that the payment system can be satisfied.

That is where risk management becomes pantomime. A tiny theoretical ignition risk is elevated into a visible behavioural offence, while larger and duller risks continue their quiet careers. It is not so much safety as administrative theatre, with unleaded.

So yes, I was naughty. I used my phone on a forecourt. I took a photograph of a registration plate. I argued probability. I was defeated by procedure. I shall continue to treat petrol vapour with respect. I shall not smoke, loiter, make calls, scroll Facebook, or behave like an idiot near the pumps. I shall take the registration photo I need, use the fuel card, fill the car, and leave. And, if challenged again, I shall probably apologise politely, because arguing Bayesian probability with a forecourt attendant in a hi-vis tabard is rarely the path to enlightenment.

But I remain unconvinced that my phone is the great danger here. The forecourt is already full of ignition sources on wheels. Mine just happens to fit in a pocket, take photographs, and offend the sign.

Somewhere in the great filing cabinet of modern Britain, a compliance box was ticked, a manager slept easier, and a tiny imaginary spark failed once again to ignite a petrol station.

Robbo the Robin

This little robin, who I have called Robbo, comes to within literally inches of me.

Not feet. Not arm’s length. Inches. He's even sat on my hat.

He stands there, looking up with complete curiosity, as though he is trying to decide what sort of strange creature I am.

His parents, meanwhile, have a rather better grasp of risk. The moment a cat appears they erupt into alarm calls, while Junior appears to wonder what all the fuss is about.

For now, I seem to have passed whatever test robins apply to humans. I am not a threat. I am simply part of the garden. His parents follow me up the garden sometimes and sit nearby, even when I'm making a racket with the ride-on-mower. It's in the nature of Robins to find humans interesting.

It will not last. In a few weeks his parents will stop seeing him as a child and start seeing him as a rival. They will drive him away because that is what robins do.

I hope he settles nearby. It would be rather nice if, one day, an adult robin with a bright red breast landed within inches of me and, for reasons known only to robins, remembered that I had always been one of the safe ones.

The Law Allows Panic. It Does Not Allow Planning

I have been thinking about self-defence, which is always a mistake, because it leads very quickly from common sense into the sort of legal maze where you begin by buying kitchen knives in a supermarket and end up mentally rehearsing your statement to the custody sergeant.

The problem began innocently enough. Suppose I buy a set of kitchen knives. Perfectly legal. Useful things. One can hardly be expected to dice an onion with stern words and a disappointed glance. But then comes the question of how to get them home.

Apparently the answer is that I may carry them home, provided they remain in their packaging, preferably with the receipt, and I proceed directly from shop to house like a man transporting medical isotopes. The knives are fine because my intention is culinary. They are kitchenware. They are not weapons. They remain kitchenware for as long as my inner monologue behaves itself.

This is where the law becomes both sensible and ridiculous, which is quite a British combination. If I am taking the knives home to chop carrots, I am a citizen. If I am taking them home and happen to think, as I pass through a grim underpass, that they might be useful if some local entrepreneur in sportswear produces one of his own, I may have wandered into a different legal category.

Same knives. Same bag. Same pavement. The crucial evidence is apparently whether my thoughts were appropriately domestic.

To be fair, the logic is not stupid. The law does not want people arming themselves in public. It cannot allow every frightened person to say, “I only had the knife because this is a rough area.” If that became a lawful excuse, then every actual thug would immediately discover a deep and touching concern for his personal safety. The streets would become safer in much the same way that adding more wasps improves a picnic.

So I understand the principle. You may defend yourself if attacked. You may use reasonable force. You may use what is genuinely to hand. But you may not go out equipped on the basis that something might happen. The law allows panic. It does not allow planning.

Still, there is a certain bleak comedy in it. If I buy a baseball bat and take it home, that is fine. If I am going to baseball practice, that is fine too, though in Britain the police may reasonably ask which American airbase I escaped from. But if I carry a baseball bat because I am nervous, it stops being sports equipment and starts auditioning for Exhibit A.

The same applies to a torch. A torch is lawful because it is for seeing things. Quite useful, seeing things. Especially at night, or in a shed, or under a car, or in any British cupboard containing three dead batteries, a radiator key and a mystery cable from 2007. But a large metal torch is also a very effective club. Carry it because it is dark and you are sensible. Carry it because it would make a useful club and suddenly the beam of justice shines rather directly into your face.

Then there is the hiking pole. Entirely innocent. It helps with balance, mud, slopes, knees and the small daily humiliation of admitting that gravity is now a more serious opponent than it used to be. Yet a hiking pole is obviously dangerous. I could destroy half a china shop with one without even meaning to. Put me in a narrow aisle with a rucksack and a collapsible pole and I could do more damage than a minor artillery incident.

But again, intent rules everything. In the hand of a walker, it is equipment. In the hand of someone muttering “just in case”, it becomes a weapon with a wrist strap.

And then, inevitably, the conversation reaches the net.

Not a fishing net on a pole. That would be far too normal. I mean a proper man-sized net, of the sort a gladiator might have used while annoying someone with a trident. It is not lethal. It is not a knife, a cosh, a baton or a baseball bat. It is practically the pacifist’s weapon, if such a thing can exist. Its main function is to make the attacker look foolish, which in a better civilisation would probably be punishment enough.

Nobody is holding up a Co-op with a gladiator net unless the education system has failed in entirely new directions. “Open the till or I shall entangle you” is not, one feels, the language of the modern hardened criminal.

And yet, legally, the net is where the whole thing becomes beautifully absurd. Because a man-sized net says, “I have anticipated trouble and brought equipment.” That is the fatal phrase. The law is not only worried about blades or blunt force trauma. It is worried about preparation for confrontation.

The net exposes the problem perfectly. It is not designed to stab or smash. It is designed to inconvenience. It is aggression by laundry. But if I carry it because I fear I may be attacked, the law begins clearing its throat. The state may tolerate a torch, a hiking pole, a shopping bag and a body full of karate, but apparently draws the line at going out dressed as a Roman fisherman with trust issues.

This is the oddity. The law is not really classifying objects. It is classifying purpose. Knife as kitchenware, lawful. Knife as reassurance, unlawful. Torch as illumination, lawful. Torch as club, risky. Hiking pole as walking aid, lawful. Hiking pole as pretext for whacking someone, not recommended unless you have developed a fondness for interview rooms. Net as theatrical prop, fine. Net as emergency yob management system, suddenly less fine.

And then we get to the human body itself. Suppose I am a karate expert. Very expert. I am not, obviously. My current fighting style is probably best described as irritated semaphore. But suppose I were. In that case, I would be walking around with hands, feet, elbows, knees and years of training. In a practical sense, I would be considerably more dangerous than a man carrying a disappointing umbrella.

Yet I am not “armed” merely by being trained. The law has not yet worked out how to put a sheath on a pensioner. I may leave the house in possession of my own limbs. This is generous, and should probably not be taken for granted.

If I use that training, though, it matters. Expertise does not remove the right of self-defence, but it may reduce one’s ability to claim innocent flailing. Once you know what you are doing, you are expected not to pretend otherwise.

So there we are. You may be strong. You may be trained. You may be frightened. You may buy knives. You may carry a torch. You may own a baseball bat. You may walk with a hiking pole. You may even, in the right theatrical circumstances, possess a net.

What you must not do is join too many of those thoughts together in advance.

That is the corridor we are given. We may move through public life carrying lawful objects for lawful purposes, while carefully not noticing their secondary possibilities. If danger appears, we may defend ourselves with reasonable force, but only in the moment, and preferably with the sort of restraint that can be admired later by people who were not present, not frightened, and not being approached by someone with a blade.

I do see why the law is written this way. The alternative is worse. Once fear becomes a general excuse for carrying weapons, everyone gets to be frightened, including the people we are frightened of. Then every street argument escalates from shouting to equipment. The thug claims self-defence. The frightened citizen carries a weapon. The next thug carries a bigger one. Eventually we all need a wheelbarrow just to pop out for milk.

But there remains a gap between legal coherence and lived reality. The law can tell you not to arm yourself. It can tell you that if attacked you may use reasonable force. It can tell you that intent matters. It can tell you that a torch is fine if it is for light and a problem if it is for skulls. It can even, if pushed, probably explain why a man-sized net is not ideal pedestrian equipment unless you are late for a gladiator-themed charity event.

What it cannot do, rather inconveniently, is walk you home through the underpass.

So the official advice ends up being something like this: carry a personal alarm, keep your phone charged, use well-lit routes, avoid trouble, do not arm yourself, and if attacked, do your best to survive in a way that remains legally elegant under later review. The state’s preferred defensive strategy is apparently admin, route planning and a device that screams.

Which is all very sensible, obviously.

Though I may still take the long way round past the supermarket entrance, with my knives sealed in their packaging, my receipt in my pocket, my hiking pole behaving itself, and my thoughts fixed firmly on carrots.

Who Cares What He Says?

It always amuses me when Gary Lineker posts something mildly political on Facebook.

Within seconds, the comments fill up with furious men called Steve demanding to know why anyone should care what he thinks. “Who cares what Gary Lineker thinks?” they type, with the urgency of someone reporting a house fire, as if they’ve stumbled upon an unauthorised thought in progress.

And yet there they are. Reading it. Reacting to it. Commenting on it. Returning later to see who agreed with them.

If nobody cared, the comment section would be empty. Gary would be posting into the digital equivalent of a windswept lay-by somewhere off the A46. But he isn’t. He’s posting into a packed stadium, and the Steves have all turned up early to boo.

This isn’t new, of course. Human beings have always been oddly susceptible to endorsement by familiar faces. For decades, we’ve happily bought aftershave because a man with excellent bone structure emerged from the sea in slow motion. We’ve purchased watches we can’t pronounce because a retired racing driver frowned meaningfully while wearing one. At no point did anyone stop to ask whether being good at driving a car very fast conferred any special insight into timekeeping. It did not matter. The association was enough.

It’s the same mechanism. Familiarity creates trust. Trust creates influence. Influence creates behaviour. It’s not complicated. It’s barely even conscious.

The funny part is that the people most offended by Gary Lineker having opinions are often the same people who have been quietly influenced by celebrity endorsement their entire lives without noticing. They’ll happily buy trainers because a footballer wears them, eat crisps because a television personality - it used to be Gary at one time - smiles reassuringly while holding the packet, and vote for politicians because they present themselves like minor celebrities on daytime television. But Gary expressing an opinion on refugees is apparently where they draw the line. That, they tell us, is manipulation.

What they really mean is that it’s influence they disagree with. Influence they agree with is simply common sense.

Psychologists call this authority bias, or sometimes the halo effect. We assume that competence in one domain spills over into others. Someone who was reliable on Match of the Day must therefore be reliable about everything else. Or, conversely, someone who was reliable on Match of the Day must shut up immediately and never speak again, depending on whether we like what they say.

The irony is that the Steves are part of the process. Their outrage amplifies the message. Every angry comment pushes the post further into the algorithm, exposing it to more people. They are, in effect, unpaid members of Gary Lineker’s publicity team, working tirelessly to ensure maximum reach.

If they truly didn’t care, they would scroll past.

But they don’t. They never do.

And Gary, somewhere in his kitchen, probably with a cup of tea, presses “post” and wanders off to make a sandwich, leaving hundreds of middle-aged men arguing with each other in his living room without supervision.

Which, when you think about it, is an extraordinary level of influence for someone who once persuaded half the country to eat crisps.

Trouble At Mill

Hayley and I have a habit of lapsing into Monty Python scripts when ordinary conversation starts looking suspiciously like one. We wait for the correct sketch to appear, then wander into it like people who ought to have more sense.

This one began when Hay came in from a swim in the pond, through the French doors, dripping slightly and wearing the expression of someone who had reached several practical conclusions in cold water.

“Badger,” she said. “Trouble at mill.”

That was my warning. In our house, “trouble at mill” is not a report of industrial unrest. It means the conversation has found a Monty Python sketch and is now backing carefully towards it.

I should explain that Badger is me. It’s not a title I applied for, nor one I remember being formally awarded. It just seems to have stuck, like a maritime rank, but with more rummaging.

“What sort of trouble?” I asked, already unwisely engaging with the witness.

“Three things,” she said.

At this point I should have known. Nothing good starts with three things. Three things is not a list. It’s a threat with numbering.

“The first thing,” she said, “is that the pond steps are slippery, and also the water level is a bit low.”

“Hang on,” I said. “Was that the first thing, or was that 1a and 1b? Because there appear to be two things smuggled into the first thing.”

“No,” she said. “That was all the first thing.”

“Right.”

“The second thing,” she continued, “is that the French doors are still letting in a draught, and also the handle sticks.”

I felt obliged to intervene, purely on procedural grounds.

“I think,” I said, “you should switch to four things in total.”

There was a pause. Not a long pause. More the sort of pause you get when someone realises you’ve noticed the quiet bit of cheating in the system.

She looked at me with the calm authority of a woman who had recently been immersed in cold pond water and was therefore operating beyond ordinary domestic logic.

“No,” she said. “There are three things.”

“There were three things when we started,” I said, “but we’re now up to four, possibly five, depending on whether the door handle is part of the draught issue or a separate constitutional crisis.”

“I didn’t expect a kind of domestic Spanish Inquisition.”

“Nobody expects the domestic Spanish Inquisition.”

At that point, against my better judgement, I found myself cast as Cardinal Ximenez, arriving with terrifying confidence and then immediately losing control of my own list.

“Our chief weapon is three things. Three things and a towel. Our two chief weapons are three things, a towel, and a slightly accusatory tone from someone standing on the kitchen tiles leaving small puddles.”

Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as slippery pond steps, low water level, draughty French doors, a sticky handle, one damp towel, and an almost fanatical insistence that these are still only three things.

At this stage I made the tactical error of trying to impose structure. This is never wise in marriage. It gives the impression that one is more interested in the filing system than the actual complaint, which is usually true, but seldom helpful.

I suggested that if the first thing contained two things, and the second thing also contained two things, then the third thing might need to be handled with some care, possibly under the supervision of a clerk.

This did not help.

Because of course the third thing turned out to contain an introductory observation, a practical recommendation, and what I can only describe as a retrospective criticism of my earlier approach to something I hadn’t realised was still under review.

So now we had three things, seven sub-things, one implied failing, a towel, and Cardinal Ximenez in the kitchen, trying to maintain doctrinal control over a list which had already escaped.

At this point I suggested she might like to go out and come in again, so we could restart the conversation properly.

This was not received in the constructive spirit intended.

In fairness, asking a woman who had just got out of a pond to re-enter through the French doors for the sake of sketch discipline was always likely to test the marriage vows. But standards are standards.

The annoying part is that she was probably right about all of it. The steps are slippery. The water level is low. The French doors do let in a draught. The handle does stick. I have no defence on the facts, only on the numbering.

But I still maintain that once a list has been announced, there should be at least some attempt to respect the declared architecture. Otherwise civilisation crumbles. First it’s three things becoming seven, then it’s a quick job becoming a weekend, then it’s me standing in the kitchen in my slippers, holding a towel, trying to work out whether I’ve agreed to adjust the pond, repair the doors, restart the scene, or simply apologise for having counted.

Anyway, I’ve added it to the list.

Under one heading.

Dear Nigel: Just a Few Questions About Your Record

Dear Nigel,

Firstly, do you mind if I call you Nigel, or would you prefer Mr Farage? Or perhaps Nigel Farage MP, although, looking at your Commons voting record and your rather novel approach to constituency surgeries, the MP part can occasionally seem more honorary than occupational.

I am repeatedly told by your supporters that you hold the secret of Britain's success. This is intriguing, because your record suggests that your economic advice has generally consisted of supporting whichever version of low-tax, deregulated Conservatism is currently being sold as a cure for everything.

You supported Brexit, of course. That was sold as liberation from bureaucracy, a revival of sovereignty and a route to prosperity. Instead, independent research based on comparisons with similar advanced economies estimates that, by the end of 2025, Brexit had left UK GDP 6 to 8% lower than it would otherwise have been. That is not a temporary wobble. It is an economic drag built into the machinery, while the country tries to regain ground it need not have lost in the first place.

Then there was Liz Truss's mini-Budget. You called it the best Conservative Budget since 1986. That is quite an endorsement for a package which helped send sterling down, borrowing costs up and pension funds into A&E, while the Government lurched into a panic-stricken reverse gear. The fact that the policy lasted roughly as long as a lettuce did not make it less economically illiterate.

You also backed Boris Johnson's Brexit settlement, despite the extra friction it created for British exporters, and spent years supporting the wider Conservative faith in tax cuts, deregulation, smaller government and the idea that growth will appear if enough safeguards are removed and enough public assets are offered to the private sector.

So when you now present yourself as the fresh alternative to the Conservatives, it is worth asking: alternative to what, exactly? You backed their biggest constitutional gamble, their most reckless fiscal experiment and much of the economic thinking that produced stagnant wages, failing public services and a country where repairing a pothole is treated as an ambitious infrastructure programme. In fact, much of the very pickle we are now in.

Your own 2024 proposals were not markedly different. Reform promised very large tax cuts, including cutting corporation tax to 15%, lifting the personal allowance from £12,570 to £20,000, and abolishing inheritance tax for estates under £2 million. The Institute for Fiscal Studies described the broad approach as very large tax cuts financed by very large spending cuts.

The higher personal allowance is the clever bit. For an ordinary basic-rate taxpayer earning at least £20,000, it would put up to about £1,486 a year back in their pocket. Nice enough, as far as it goes. But what is it worth if the cuts needed to fund it mean longer waits for treatment, more pressure to buy private medical insurance, poorer local services, and a fiscal position which sends mortgage rates upwards?

That is the double-edged bribe. You give people a modest sum through the front door, then risk taking it back through the side entrance in private costs, higher interest payments and services they must either pay for themselves or do without. Meanwhile, the really substantial gains go to those with large estates, property portfolios, profitable companies and accountants clever enough to find the favourable corners, and who are far better placed to buy privately what everyone else loses publicly.

Then there is the immigration offer. Deportation commands, detention centres, removal flights, withdrawing benefits from foreign nationals and barring them from social housing may make for a sturdy headline. They do not constitute an answer to weak productivity, poor housing supply, low wages, NHS waiting lists or the long-term failure to train enough British workers.

If the policy is aimed only at people with no right to be here, explain what new power or capacity it adds beyond enforcing the laws already on the statute book. Deportations do not happen merely because a British minister announces them. They require identity documents, lawful detention, functioning courts and, above all, return agreements with the countries expected to take people back.

Britain cannot simply put people on aircraft and declare the destination obliged to accept them. Airlines will not carry passengers whom the receiving country may refuse, because the carrier can be liable for the cost and responsibility of bringing an inadmissible passenger back again. That is why deportations require return agreements, verified identity documents and the co-operation of the destination state, not merely a ministerial press release and a row of flags at an airfield.

If it reaches lawful workers and settled families, explain who replaces them in care homes, hospitals, food processing, construction and hospitality, and at what cost. Making their lives more precarious does not build houses, train nurses or repair public services. It merely gives the public somebody to blame while the people writing the cheques get on with the real business.

There is also a wider question about the company you keep. Your party is increasingly funded by millionaires, billionaires, cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and people with a fairly obvious interest in lower taxes, lighter regulation and fewer awkward public constraints on private wealth.

We are apparently expected to believe that these men have developed a sudden and touching enthusiasm for the democratic institutions which regulate them, tax them, constrain monopolies, protect workers, police markets and provide some protection for the average citizen when things go wrong. Perhaps they have. But it would be reassuring to hear why they are so keen to finance a party proposing to weaken precisely those institutions while cutting the taxes which pay for them.

There is also the small matter of the reported £5 million personal gift from Christopher Harborne, now being examined by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. You may say it was private and unconditional. But when a politician who presents himself as the scourge of the establishment, and who at the time owned Reform UK Ltd outright, receives millions from a wealthy crypto businessman, people are entitled to ask questions.

Not because it proves wrongdoing. It does not. But because the distinction between a private gift and financial support for the owner of a political party becomes rather less clear-cut in those circumstances. You cannot spend years denouncing cosy arrangements in Westminster, then treat public curiosity about a £5 million arrangement around your own party as bad manners.

So, to use one of your own stock phrases, I am only asking the question, Nigel, because your record to date gives me no confidence whatsoever.

Which taxes would you cut? What would replace the revenue? Which public services would be cut, privatised or allowed to decline? How would you fund defence, the NHS, social care, councils, courts and prisons while cutting taxes and holding down borrowing?

And, when the personal allowance has gone up, the services have gone down, mortgage rates have risen and the people needed to staff the country have been driven away, who exactly will you blame then?

Presumably not yourself. That has never seemed to be the business model.

Yours sincerely,

Chairman Bill

The Incredible Shrinking Menswear Department

You can tell a civilisation is in decline by the shrinking size of the men's department in charity shops. Not the economy. Not politics. Not even the disappearance of proper bank branches. The real sign is walking into a charity shop and discovering that the entire male section now occupies roughly the same floor area as a modest airing cupboard.

Women's clothes still dominate the premises, obviously. Rails everywhere. Dresses. Shoes. Handbags the size of emergency lifeboats. Strange floaty garments that seem to require their own engineering standards. Half the shop looks like somebody's exploded wardrobe after a difficult divorce in Cheltenham.

Then, somewhere near the back, usually beside a shelf containing three golf annuals from 1987 and a breadmaker without a paddle, sits "Menswear". All of it. Two rails and half a shelf. One rail for shirts nobody wanted even when they were new, and another for fleeces with embroidered logos from agricultural suppliers, regional plumbing firms and IT consultancies that collapsed during the Blair years.

Which is ironic, because most of the men's clothes in charity shops didn't arrive there through male initiative in the first place. Men rarely stand in front of a wardrobe thinking, "I shall now donate these garments for the benefit of the community." No. Men's clothes leave the house because wives quietly decide the process has begun.

A bloke will come downstairs wearing a perfectly serviceable fleece he's owned since the Cameron years and hear the fatal sentence:

"You're not still wearing that, are you?"

That's it. The decision has been made. A week later the fleece disappears into a black sack despite still having at least another decade of useful life left in it. The husband searches mildly for a few days, asks once whether anyone's seen his blue fleece, then eventually starts wearing an even older one from the garage instead.

Women donate clothes aspirationally. Men donate clothes accidentally. Which may also explain why the menswear department keeps shrinking despite this constant stream of surrendered garments. Women's clothes often arrive at charity shops because somebody's reinventing themselves. "I've gone off linen." "I don't really wear this colour now." "It doesn't suit who I am anymore."

Men's clothes leave circulation only after complete mechanical exhaustion.

A man's jumper doesn't become donation-ready until it's survived DIY, oil changes, decorating, several garden projects and at least one encounter with expanding foam. By the time his wife finally drags it towards the charity sack, the elbows are translucent, one cuff has gone strangely rigid and the whole thing smells faintly of petrol, damp shed and quiet resistance.

So perhaps the mystery isn't why the men's section is small. Perhaps most male clothing simply never makes it onto the rails because the sorting volunteers take one look and quietly redirect it into the rag bag.

"Another polo shirt, Margaret."

"Good Lord. Look at the collar."

"Workshop cloths."

Mind you, I once went into my local charity shop and spotted a polo shirt that had mysteriously vanished from my own wardrobe several months earlier. There it was, hanging on the rail for £3.50, looking slightly confused but otherwise perfectly healthy. I recognised it immediately. Tiny paint spot near the hem. Slight fade on the collar. Mine.

So I bought it.

Which means I effectively paid to recover my own property after it had completed some sort of unauthorised domestic recycling loop. I can only assume the volunteers thought I was very keen on Next polo shirts. I didn't explain. It felt awkward.

I brought it home wearing an expression of quiet triumph, like a man who's recovered stolen artwork.

Hay looked at it for about two seconds and said, "Oh God, not that thing again."

Which rather confirmed my theory that men's clothes are not donated because they're worn out. They're donated because somewhere, eventually, a woman reaches a limit.

That would also explain the strange survivors still hanging in the men's department. Untouched funeral shirts. Waterproof jackets bought for one wet holiday in Wales. Golf jumpers belonging to men called Keith. Trousers with creases sharp enough to slice ham.

The sizing doesn't help either. Charity shops appear to believe men come only in Small or Recently Deceased Enormous. You hold up a jacket labelled Medium and it would comfortably fit a child trumpet player. Then beside it hangs a XXXL blazer capable of covering a Mondeo and half the driveway.

Meanwhile the women's section stretches off into the distance like a textile-based nature reserve. Men get one wire basket labelled "Belts", usually containing three cracked fake leather specimens and something woven that no human being has voluntarily worn since 2004.

Still, we browse them. Hope springs eternal. Every now and then you find treasure. A proper Barbour. A Harris Tweed jacket. An almost new pair of Loakes that clearly belonged to a man who died before he'd fully worn them in. That possibility keeps you going through the endless polyester disappointment.

Then you leave having bought none of those things, but somehow carrying a chipped mug, a hardback biography of Montgomery, a sandwich toaster missing one plate, and apparently your own polo shirt.

The Death of the Postcard

I was trying to enter a classic car competition the other day. One of those "Win This Beautifully Restored Jaguar E-Type" things that appear between adverts for erectile dysfunction tablets and miracle lawn feed.

Now, being me, I naturally ignored the £12.50 online entry route and went looking for the free postal entry option buried somewhere in the terms and conditions, because there always is one. Usually hidden in six-point font between "employees may not enter" and "the judges' decision is final". Sure enough, there it was.

"Free entries accepted by postcard only."

Excellent, I thought. Outsmarted the system again. The old ways endure.

Except they don't, because apparently Britain no longer has postcards. Not scenic postcards. I wasn't after a picture of Blackpool Tower at sunset or a startled donkey on Weston-super-Mare beach. I just wanted an actual plain postcard. A rectangle of card. Roughly A6. The sort of thing Victorian people managed to acquire while simultaneously building railways across India.

I tried the Post Office first, naturally enough. No postcards. Which feels a bit like discovering Halfords no longer sells car parts but has an excellent range of scented candles and mortgage advice.

Then Ryman. No postcards there either, despite apparently selling them online, suggesting they now occupy the same mythical retail category as affordable housing and competent government IT systems.

Then The Works. Now, The Works can supply you with an astonishing range of items nobody has ever consciously decided to buy. Want a felt owl? No problem. A motivational sign saying "Gin O'Clock" in distressed lettering? Entire aisle devoted to it. A cardboard 3D Chinese temple requiring 14 hours of assembly and the patience of a neurosurgeon? Absolutely. Several, in fact.

But postcards?

No.

At this point the entire thing became strangely fascinating. I found myself driving around South Gloucestershire asking increasingly confused teenagers whether they stocked "blank postcard stock". You can actually see the panic in their eyes. They've been trained for vape juice, printer cartridges and parcel returns. Suddenly some ageing bloke in a fleece is demanding Edwardian communications technology.

One assistant suggested I "print something from Canva". Another pointed me towards birthday cards. A third looked at me with the cautious expression normally reserved for men who collect carrier bags full of damp clocks. Eventually I discovered that what I actually needed to ask for was "300gsm A6 card stock", because postcards apparently no longer exist as a recognised concept within British retail.

And somewhere around this point I started to suspect the competition companies knew this perfectly well. The free postal entry exists because legally it has to, but they've quietly chosen the one object modern Britain can no longer actually supply. You can still buy artisanal Korean face serum at midnight from a petrol station, but try obtaining a plain postcard and suddenly you're recreating the supply chain problems of the Napoleonic Wars.

And that's oddly revealing, because postcards used to matter. People sent them from holiday because international phone calls cost roughly the GDP of Belgium and because nobody wanted to hear your entire holiday in real time anyway. You got one small rectangle.

"Weather lovely. Hotel terrible. Dad sunburnt. Back Tuesday."

That was enough.

Now people bombard each other with 400 photographs of tapas before they've even finished chewing it, and somehow we know less about each other than we did in 1978. There was also something gloriously democratic about postcards. No apps. No subscriptions. No passwords. No verification emails. No QR codes leading to another QR code. Just card. Write on it. Stick stamp on. Done.

The competition companies know most people under 40 would rather rebuild a carburettor blindfolded than locate an actual postcard. Frankly, by the time I'd finished searching for one, I felt I'd earned the bloody Jaguar anyway.

Though knowing my luck, if I do eventually find a postcard, Royal Mail will probably classify it as a small parcel.

A Coronation in All But Name?

The talk of preventing a Burnham coronation is mostly Westminster theatre.

Al Carns and Darren Jones may be capable men, but Burnham has the public profile, the Makerfield win and the momentum. A contest could prevent a literal coronation. It is unlikely to prevent the practical one.

That does not make a contest pointless. Anyone about to become Prime Minister should have to explain what he intends to do about tax, Europe, defence, borrowing, immigration and the rest of the things that become awkward once the photographs outside Number 10 are over.

But there is a difference between proper scrutiny and pretending that every able politician must throw his hat into the ring simply because the hat happens to be available.

Darren Jones is one to watch. I have said before that, from the interviews I have seen, he knows his brief, is never visibly flustered and does not look as though the question has arrived from another planet. That is rarer than it ought to be.

He has also had a serious political apprenticeship. He has been MP for Bristol North West since 2017, chaired the Commons Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, served as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and now sits at the centre of government as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations. That is a fairly formidable route through the machinery of government for someone still relatively young.

He has the look of future Chancellor material. Possibly, after that, future Prime Minister material.

But this may be the wrong contest and the wrong moment.

The next general election will not turn on who can give the tidiest answer on the medium-term fiscal forecast. It will be won or lost on whether Labour can stop Reform turning accumulated frustration into a vote for national self-harm.

Burnham is probably better placed for that immediate task. He has the profile, the political instincts and a way of talking that makes Labour sound as though it understands why people are angry, rather than merely being slightly disappointed by the volume at which they are expressing it.

Jones may be better placed for the work that follows: making the figures add up and turning industrial strategy, investment, tax reform and public capacity into something that survives contact with the Treasury, the bond market and the depressing discovery that enthusiasm is not a recognised funding stream.

That could be a very useful division of labour.

Burnham could be the political figurehead who stops Labour being swallowed by the Reform mood. Jones could be the Chancellor who ensures that Labour’s answer is not simply a more articulate version of fantasy economics.

There is a temptation in Westminster to use people up too quickly. Someone performs well in a few interviews, gets described as a rising star, and is then expected to march straight into a leadership contest before they have built enough authority, experience or public recognition to withstand the national ritual of having their life turned into a tabloid pinata.

Jones does not need to do that now.

A Burnham victory would not end his prospects. It could improve them. A serious stint at Number 11, helping to make a Burnham government work rather than merely sound hopeful, would give him the record and credibility that no hurried leadership bid can provide.

Burnham may be the man Labour needs for the election it has to win.

Jones may be the man Labour needs once the speeches are over and somebody has to make the machinery work.

£19

£19 - that’s the bit that really lifts it from mere disappointment into the foothills of comedy.

Hayley bought me a pair of flip flops. Not complex machinery. Not something with Bluetooth, firmware, a warranty card and a small man in Shenzhen monitoring my gait. Just flip flops. The sort of thing mankind more or less perfected once someone realised feet were at the bottom and beaches were gritty.

They took almost a week to arrive, which is an impressive gestation period for two bits of plastic and a toe strap. I was half expecting a midwife to knock on the door with them wrapped in a towel.

Then I put them on.

Now, I’m not a soft-footed aristocrat who needs velvet underfoot and a footman scattering rose petals ahead of me. I’ve walked on ships’ decks, gravel drives, garage floors, and the occasional Lego brick left by children who are now grown men and therefore have no excuse. But these things have little raised bobbles all over the sole, presumably intended to provide therapeutic stimulation.

Therapeutic, in this case, seems to mean being interrogated through the soles of your feet.

After about ten steps I’d had enough. They weren’t flip flops. They were budget acupressure sandals designed by someone who’d heard of comfort but regarded it as a bourgeois weakness. It was like walking across a tray of drawing pins while being told it was good for circulation.

And again, £19!

For £19 I don’t expect Italian leather, ergonomic brilliance, or a faint scent of Amalfi lemons. I do, however, expect to be able to cross the kitchen without developing the expression of a man walking barefoot across a medieval battlefield.

So back they went, immediately. Hayley’s intentions were kind, which is why I’m still married and the flip flops aren’t. They may suit someone with feet made of teak, or perhaps a retired fakir who feels his life has become too easy. How they make any money from them is beyond me.

For everyone else, I’d suggest ordinary flip flops. Or shoes. Or simply staying where you are.

A Design Failure

There are certain objects from history that people insist on treating with reverence simply because they are ancient. The amphora is one of them. Museums display them with solemn lighting as though they represent the apex of practical design. Historians stroke their chins about Mediterranean trade networks. Archaeologists lovingly catalogue fragments of them by the thousand.

It is, however, a clay bottle that cannot stand up. That seems quite an important design flaw to have overlooked for several centuries.

The ancient Greeks gave us philosophy, geometry and democracy, then apparently looked at a storage container continuously falling over and thought, "Yes. This is the future." The thing has a pointed bottom like a ceramic artillery shell. You cannot just place it on the floor. It has to be wedged into sand, slotted into racks, or supported by other amphorae in some sort of giant wine-based game of structural engineering.

The usual defence is that they stacked well in ships. Fine. So do shopping trolleys, but I would not want to drink from one.

Meanwhile somewhere in prehistoric northern Europe, the so-called Bell Beaker culture people, who were basically wandering about in skins dragging bits of bronze through muddy forests, had already stumbled upon the revolutionary insight that containers should preferably remain upright when unattended. You can almost picture the exchange.

"Behold, our advanced Mediterranean civilisation."

"Very impressive. Why does your bottle need scaffolding?"

The Romans eventually began shifting towards barrels, particularly in northern Europe, and you can see why. A barrel can be rolled, stacked, repaired, stood upright and generally treated like an object intended for actual human use. The amphora, by contrast, feels like something optimised entirely around galley cargo density by an early logistics consultant who had never personally carried one.

And this is the thing about civilisations. Intelligence is rarely evenly distributed. One society invents abstract mathematics but cannot design practical kitchenware. Another masters durable storage but lives in round huts. Human progress is less a majestic march forwards than a drunken shopping trolley veering between brilliance and absurdity.

I suspect a lot of ancient dockworkers privately hated amphorae. You do not carry a two-handled clay torpedo full of olive oil down a hot quay without occasionally muttering that there must be a better way of doing this. Somewhere there was probably an Aegean equivalent of a man in a tavern saying, "You know what this needs? A flat bottom."

At which point everyone ignored him for another five hundred years because tradition, civilisation, and cultural heritage are often just expensive ways of saying, "We've always done it like this."

The UniParty Has Failed Us - Allegedly

There is a phrase doing the rounds now: people feel they have been failed by the UniParty. 

The term UniParty is a political descriptor used to suggest that two or more dominant political parties in a democracy function in practice as a single entity. It implies that despite outward disagreements, they share a core set of elite interests and operate as a unified establishment.

What they actually mean that the escalator has stopped.

The UniParty is largely a misunderstanding of what government is. It is not a secret club of politicians meeting in Westminster to agree that nothing can be improved. It is what politics looks like when it runs into facts, circumstances, arithmetic, demographics, international markets and commitments made years before the current lot arrived.

As any system matures, the number of available levers reduces. It develops around its existing pensions, housing market, tax base, public services, debt, trade relationships, infrastructure and labour force. Each part becomes tied to the others. Pull one lever sharply and something else moves, often expensively.

That is why parties begin to look more alike once they reach government. Not because they have all joined the same secret club, but because they are operating inside the same structural scaffolding. The more mature and interconnected the system becomes, the less room there is for radical exits without causing damage somewhere else.

Different parties can still decide who pays, who benefits and what gets protected. Those choices matter enormously. But they cannot simply step outside the framework they inherit, abolish the trade-offs, or restore an earlier version of Britain by force of personality and a few shouted slogans. Government is not a wish-fulfilment service with a Treasury card attached.

A government cannot abolish an ageing population, conjure skilled workers overnight, build houses without land or consent, provide Scandinavian public services on bargain-basement taxation, borrow indefinitely without consequences, or make trade barriers disappear by shouting at Brussels. Different parties can make different choices about who pays, who benefits and what gets protected. But they cannot repeal the basic constraints of the country they govern.

That is why the phrase is so useful to Reform. It turns every difficult trade-off into evidence of betrayal. It implies that there is an easy route back to security and prosperity, held back only by cowardly politicians and the wrong sort of people in Westminster. There are choices, but none of them allows the country to have more while contributing less.

Their parents got a better house, a better job, a better car, a better pension and a generally more comfortable life than their own parents had enjoyed. They assumed the escalator would continue upwards, with every generation stepping off on a higher floor.

For a while, that was a reasonable expectation. Britain did become markedly more prosperous in the post-war decades. Cheap energy, expanding trade, rapid productivity growth, a growing workforce, mass housebuilding and North Sea oil all helped. There were more decent jobs, more homes, more public investment and a greater sense that ordinary people might share in what the country produced.

But the gains were not simply left at the top and allowed to dribble down by some mysterious law of economics. Stronger unions ensured that some of the proceeds reached wages. Higher taxation on high incomes and profits ensured that part of what was created was recycled into homes, schools, hospitals, roads, transport, pensions and public services.

Higher taxes did not create the factories, the trade or the productivity growth. They helped turn economic growth into broader security and shared living standards, rather than allowing the gains to remain concentrated in private wealth. That is rather different from saying prosperity appeared because someone in Whitehall moved a tax lever.

Then Britain began to rely less on productive growth and more on a weaker model. Rising house prices made homeowners feel richer, while cheap credit let people spend future income now. Governments could promise more while postponing the bill. Councils sold assets, infrastructure was deferred, investment became expendable, and rising property values were increasingly treated as evidence of national success.

The house could be remortgaged, the kitchen financed, the newer car bought on credit and the holiday paid for later. Some of it was genuine improvement. Much of it was tomorrow's money being spent today, while the foundations of future prosperity were quietly neglected.

There is also an awkward generational point here. We have had a cohort which did substantially better than its parents. It bought homes when they were cheap relative to income, saw them become valuable, benefited from more secure employment and more generous pensions, and then understandably wanted to protect what it had acquired.

The difficulty came when protecting those gains made the same route harder for those following behind. Fewer homes were built because development threatened property values or views. Pension promises became politically untouchable, while the tax base needed to sustain them was narrowed. The general instinct was to preserve existing comfort, even where that made it harder for younger people to buy, save, rent securely or build any comparable stake in the country.

None of that requires malice. It is simply what happens when a generation treats its own success as an entitlement to be frozen in place.

The result is that younger people now face high rents, high house prices, weaker wage growth, insecure work, expensive childcare and far less chance of accumulating wealth in the way their parents did. They are expected to finance an ageing society while being told that any attempt to rebalance housing, wealth or taxation is an assault on common sense.

So the complaint that people have been failed becomes muddled. Some people have been badly let down, particularly younger people trying to establish a secure life. But some of the expectations now being voiced are unrealistic because of the choices made to get here.

You cannot vote for lower taxes, privatisation, selling council houses without replacing them, opposition to development, weaker unions, cuts to public investment and withdrawal from your largest trading market, then expect better services, cheaper homes, secure pensions, lower debt and no disruption to anything you already own.

Those choices were repeatedly popular. They were voted for, applauded and defended as common sense. But they were also promoted and amplified by wealthy interests with money, media access and a direct stake in the outcome. Lower taxes, weaker regulation, privatisation and a smaller state were not abstractions to them. They were very good business.

The public were sold the comforting idea that lower taxes, rising house prices, better services and fewer obligations could all coexist indefinitely.

Now people want the benefits of the old settlement while refusing the costs, trade-offs and collective obligations that made it possible. Better public services, secure pensions, cheaper housing, lower taxes, low debt and no threat to accumulated wealth. It is not a programme. It is a shopping list written without looking at the bank balance.

And this is where Reform comes in.

Reform offers an even sharper version of the same bargain: lower taxes for those who can afford them, weaker institutions, fewer protections at work, and the promise that the old security can somehow be restored without anyone wealthy contributing more. It asks people to believe that the answer to a country with insufficient public capacity is to reduce the means by which public capacity is paid for.

You do not need a PhD in economics to see where that leads.

If wealthy people pay less tax, public services have less money. If public services have less money, ordinary people either receive less or pay privately for what was once collectively provided. If assets are sold, someone will charge rent for using what used to belong to everyone. If workers have fewer rights, the risks move downwards while the gains move upwards.

That is not freedom. It is a transfer pump.

The people at the top get more. The people below are told to wait patiently for the proceeds to trickle down. And when they do not, they are told there was not enough deregulation, not enough tax cutting, not enough flexibility, and not enough faith in the very people who have been doing rather well all along.

Trickle-down economics is one of the great cons of the last fifty years. It did not work for most of human history, when wealth and land were concentrated in a small class while everyone else survived on what remained after rent, tithes and the landlord's share. There is no obvious reason why reviving the same arrangement with hedge funds and private equity should suddenly make it fairer.

People are angry because the ladder has been pulled up behind a generation that climbed it when the rungs were still there. Reform's answer is not to put the rungs back. It is to make the people already at the top even more secure, and tell everyone else that this time the proceeds really will trickle down.