SO, now we know.
The Prime Minister got a private ten-minute audience with the caterwauling American moppet Taylor Swift.
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It was at the last of her recent concerts at Wembley Stadium, for which Sir Keir Starmer received free tickets.
Slowly it is all beginning to emerge. It hadn’t been clear previously as to whether or not Starmer was snuck backstage. With his merch ready to be autographed, I s’pose.
We still don’t know if the PM tried to charm Taylor.
Perhaps by outlining his plans to set up an exciting state-owned facilitating body called British Energy which would invest in the harvesting of unicorn tears.
That would have grabbed her attention. She will have been all aquiver.
However, we do know that top Labour politicians and the PM’s then Chief of Staff Sue Gray lobbied the Metropolitan Police in order that taxpayers’ money should be spent on a “VVIP” escort for Swift when she arrived in London.
That kind of thing is usually reserved for members of the Royal Family and Third World dictators.
But having threatened to pull out of her tour if she wasn’t treated in the manner to which she felt accustomed, the Government went to work on her behalf.
And, hey presto, suddenly Sir Keir got his tickets. And indeed ten senior Labour MPs were handed freebies for the gig. Quite why they wanted to go is beyond my imagination. But there’s no accounting for taste, is there?
This is the dimmest Cabinet on record so I suppose it is to be expected.
Whatever way you look at it, though, this is corruption.
OK, it’s not the kind of Russki oligarch-level corruption. It’s low-level corruption, but corruption all the same.
Starmer knows it was wrong because he has paid back the cost of the tickets.
Surreptitious trousering
Along with another few thousand quids’ worth of freebies he got, such as tickets to football matches.
He has always insisted that there have been no quid pro quos.
But then we learned that Labour donor Lord Alli had bunged Starmer loads of freebies — such as clothes, spectacles and the loan of a very expensive apartment.
And we also learned that Lord Alli had been given a role which allowed him the free run of No10 Downing Street.
Just a coincidence, then, huh? Do you really expect anybody to believe that? Now we learned what Labour is up to with the civil service.
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Since Starmer took office he has appointed 200 cronies to influential positions within the civil service.
That’s two per day for every day he has been in office.
These people were all appointed without the usual civil service interview procedures. Just a case of — yeah, you vote the right way.
Come and help us destroy the British economy on a humongous wage. You just look at the evidence. A row over cronyism in his first weeks in office and then these ludicrous appointments at your expense.
In other words, bunging important jobs to mates.
And then the surreptitious trousering of freebies and dosh.
If you remember, this was one of the big reasons for getting rid of the Tories.
They were seen to be in it for themselves, bunging contracts to mates and partying at our expense.
But Labour has easily outdone them inside just three months.
Someone tell me. What the hell were we all thinking on July 4?
GAME ON FOR TUCHEL
JUDGING from the papers, there are three main complaints about Thomas Tuchel becoming the manager of England.
The first is that he likes a bit of how’s yer father. Bit of a tangled love life, in the past.
Not the sort of behaviour you’d associate with Sir Alf, then. He had sex with his wife once every seven years, through a hole in a piece of wood. Probably.
Anyway, that doesn’t bother me. Then there’s the fact (unlikely Champions League win aside) that he failed at Chelsea. Come on – everybody fails at Chelsea. It’s a club that could suck all the light out of the universe.
The third is that he’s German. For those who think that the England manager should be English, eat a full English every day, prune his roses and trace his lineage back to King Alfred . . . sorry, that ship has sailed. Long ago.
Truth is Tuchel is about as good a manager as it gets. And he has my full and unqualified support.
Until we get stuffed by the Faroe Islands.
Keep going Kemi . . . don’t let the b’stards get you down
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THE knives are out for Kemi Badenoch. Her Conservative colleagues are lining up to cause as much harm to her leadership bid as possible.
That’s because they know that when it comes to a vote by the party activists, Badenoch would win by a mile. And so she should. She would hammer Sir Keir Starmer at the despatch box.
And her views would resonate with an enormous number of voters who deserted the party in July.
Stick at it, Kemi – they know you’re on the home straight.
A STEP TOO FAR
I KNOW that the debate about the rights and wrongs of assisted dying are complex and emotive.
And we all know that when an elderly relative has died after a long, harrowing and painful illness, there is a sadness often tinged with relief.
But it is a step too far for me. Like it or not, it will bring pressure on those chronically ill elderly folk who fear they are a burden. And then there are the suicidal young.
I believe human life is sacred and that is true even if it is a life full of pain.
TALENT IRONIC AT BEEB
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THE Director-General of the BBC, Tim Davie, has decided to ban referring to TV presenters as “the talent”.
Because it implies that everybody else working on the programmes therefore isn’t the talent.
I get where he’s coming from, sure. But from my days at the BBC I can assure you the word “talent” was only ever used in a satirical manner.
As in: “Aha! Look out, here comes the talent! The great blockheaded smirking oaf.”
Believe me, nobody who worked with some of the presenters we worked with could use the word talent and keep a straight face.
It was used, interchangeably, with “a***hole” and meant the same thing.
MATCH IS IDEAL
SO, it looks like Gary Lineker will be staying at Match Of The Day.
And the Beeb has scrabbled around in its purse and found £400k for Alan Shearer.
I have no problem with either of those decisions. Lineker may know less about politics than a naked mole rat.
But he is a superlative football presenter.
Meanwhile, Shearer, alongside Roy Keane, is the shrewdest pundit of the game.
Long may they continue. And if they could bring back Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson, all the better.
