Monday
At the weekend, Suella Braverman and various other Tory MPs on Twitter were trying to persuade us not to believe the evidence of our own eyes. The long queues of coaches and cars at Dover were nothing to do with Brexit, they insisted. Rather, they had been caused by the weather being nasty and more people choosing to travel than expected. Just imagine expecting calm seas and hot sun on the first weekend in April. And being taken by surprise by more traffic at the start of the Easter holidays. I could have sworn we had bad weather and Easter holidays before we left the EU and there weren’t long delays, but maybe I’m just imagining things.
It’s also just a total coincidence that border officials now have to check each passport thoroughly to make sure no one has overstayed their 90-day limit in any 180. It also turns out that the Cabinet Office was advised to install more customs booths at Dover in anticipation of greater delays and decided against it on the grounds of expense. Far more cost-effective to leave coachloads of children queueing for 15 hours. Part of growing up and being British. Ann Widdecombe – she always turns up when she has nothing worthwhile to say – went so far as to blame the French for the queues. It was the least they could have done to have employed more border staff to accommodate the extra British visitors – even though there was no room for them at Dover.
Only reluctantly did No 10 finally admit that Brexit may have had a very small part to play in the delays. So small it was hardly worth mentioning. It feels as if we are being gaslit and that there is an omertà on anyone talking about the downsides of Brexit. Even when they are obvious and we all know them to be true. It is not even about trying to reverse Brexit – most of us have long since given up on that. It’s about having reality recognised.
Tuesday
Two episodes into Stephen Knight’s adaptation of Great Expectations and I haven’t bailed out yet. So I guess I am in for the duration. I’m not hating it as much as many others seem to be – I can live with the swearing and Miss Havisham smoking her way through the last of the family fortune, though I can’t see that turning Pip’s sister into the local dominatrix adds much – it’s just that I can’t really see the point of it. It all feels a bit try-hard and that Knight would either have been better off sticking to the original or coming up with his own story line. There is also a lingering feeling that Great Expectations has been done to death on the TV. So why not a lesser-known Dickens or an Anthony Trollope? I’d love to see a new version of the Barsetshire chronicles. Or better still a repeat of Alan Plater’s 1982 adaptation. The best I can say of the new Great Expectations is that is fills a serviceable gap in the Sunday night schedules.
Rather more gripping is the final series of Succession, in which every line is a gem. The ones that I can hear at least. Maybe my ears are failing, but all the actors apart from Brian Cox seem to either garble or mumble their lines. I’m sure it is deliberate but I could do with subtitles. The showdown in the New York karaoke bar was sublime. Conor singing Leonard Cohen, the other children pumped up with entitlement and Logan cutting them down by accusing them of not being serious. His biggest insult. A darker set of souls it is hard to imagine.
Then, it is hard for Succession to keep up with real life. Only a few weeks ago, Rupert Murdoch was announcing his new engagement and saying he was looking forward to the second half of his life. At the time I wrote that on present projections, Murdoch would be getting married and divorced on the same day by the time he was 160. That may need a rethink: Murdoch has just called off his engagement.
Wednesday
The ConservativeHome website has just published its latest cabinet league table. Well out ahead yet again, with a net satisfaction rating of more than 85, is Ben Wallace. Quite why the defence secretary is so popular with Tory party members is something of a mystery as he doesn’t seem to ever do that much. Or perhaps that is why. Tories clearly like a minister who keeps a low profile, is not obviously ambitious, condemns the Russia invasion of Ukraine once a month and doesn’t moan too much when he gets less than half the money he wanted for his department in the budget.
Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak has shot up from sixth bottom to sixth from top, thanks largely to getting the Windsor framework through parliament with only a few of his MPs rebelling. Though a ranking of 43.7 is hardly a ringing endorsement. Suella Braverman has gone from sixth bottom last November to fourth from top in April. Seems as if you can never be too unpleasant to refugees. Or too stupid. Only this week the Home Office had to delete a tweet: “It’s time to end one of the greatest injustices of modern Britain” above a picture of Suella.
Curiously, Dominic Raab ranks mid-table with 31. Presumably it is his temper and the 24 allegations of bullying that Conservatives find so attractive. Without these he would be well into minus numbers. As is “Airmiles” Thérèse Coffey, who props up the table on -2.3. Even then, you have to wonder why she isn’t rated even worse as it is hard to imagine a more incompetent environment secretary. Having fallen out with the farmers at their annual conference, Coffey has now made a virtue of doing nothing to stop the water companies from releasing sewage into our rivers and on to our beaches. Her best trick is to turn up late for her own speeches in which she re-announces proposals she has already announced. Only this week, she declared it was impossible to have a plan that worked, before saying she had a plan that would work. Though she couldn’t at this stage say what it was.
Thursday
Earlier this week my friend Pete tweeted that he was gutted to be missing his annual trip to Goodison Park. I replied that by the end of the game he was almost certain to be relieved he hadn’t made the 400-mile round trip.
Turns out I was right. You don’t go far wrong by expecting the worst of Spurs these days. We’re not just managerless after Antonio Conte publicly shamed the entire squad – justifiably, as it happens, though he may want to consider his own role in their performance – but also without a director of football in Fabio Paratici. Who could have guessed that a man who was considered too corrupt for Italian football might end up with a worldwide ban by Fifa?
Right now, Spurs are the laughing stock of the Premier League. Only I can’t quite bring myself to laugh as it is too depressing. Having gone 1-0 up and a player up – not altogether deservedly – against Everton, Spurs went to play the most brainless, inept football imaginable for the last half hour. It was inevitable to everyone the home team would equalise. Which they did. Thanks to a long-range effort that the Spurs goalkeeper made no effort to save. Normally you can find some redeeming factors, but after this game all the fans were in despair.
This is the worst team I have seen for decades. Not only in ability but in heart. They all look as if they would rather be anywhere than White Hart Lane. As would I. When the game finished, I sold my ticket for Saturday’s game against Brighton. I just could not face it. It was the happiest I had felt about football in a while. Sod’s law, then, that the invitation to renew my season ticket arrived yesterday.
Friday
There is less than a month to the coronation and it feels as if no one is that excited. Various members of the royal family have reportedly been practising wearing crowns – the king’s is particularly heavy – at Buckingham Palace but I haven’t seen any coronation merch on sale and the papers and TV have barely raised a flicker of interest.
Maybe they feel we all overdosed on royal coverage when the queen died last year, though that could all change in the coming weeks. One thing we do know is that Charles is determined to do things his own way. No bad thing, as he has always appeared a bit lost when doing official duties. As if he is acting out a part – impostor syndrome – rather than being accepted as a real king. It must be hard having to live up to your mother and knowing you will never be as loved by the country as her.
Still, we have seen the invitation to the coronation: though, as someone said to me, it looks more like a tea towel on sale at some second-rate National Trust property than a formal royal invite. Or failing that, a flyer for a chill-out tent at Glastonbury. Most people have focused on the appearance of the green man at the bottom. I am more concerned about the blue insect. My friend Patrick Barkham, who knows about these things, has observed it has the body of a moth and the antennae of a butterfly. So it is some kind of mutant.
Then there is the content, which upgrades Camilla to queen. Fair enough. Queen consort implies “the woman shagging the king”, and we all know she has been doing that since well before Diana, so she’s probably due an upgrade. Though it does show how the royals have different priorities to us, how sensitive they are to imagined slights. The king has apparently been desperate to make Camilla queen for a while. I’ve yet to meet anyone who is that bothered what she calls herself.
