Will Putin go nuclear?

A ghastly tragedy Ukraine may well be, but it is coming to the rescue of a number of British Conservative politicians. Most notably Boris Johnson, of course, who would surely be out of a job by now if Vladimir Putin had not rolled those tanks across the border on 24 February, just as Sue Gray was getting her act together. A little later, Ukraine gave David Cameron a facelift as he was photographed driving a van full of supplies to the transgressed country. Supplies of what? Large sacks full of smuggery and emollience, one supposes. Or tiny wind turbines like that one he shoved on the side of his house to buttress his green credentials and which would take seven years and three months to boil water for a cup of tea.

The latest is Brooks Newmark. I had forgotten all about Brooks and it would not surprise me if you had, too. A former Conservative MP, he has been funding – and indeed taking part in – rescue missions to bring Ukrainian refugees to the UK and has (according to the Times) ‘almost single-handedly’ delivered to this country more than 7,500 Ukrainian women and children.

Brooks is a former Conservative MP, rather than a sitting one, because in 2014 it was revealed that he had sent naked photographs of himself to an undercover reporter posing as a nubile Tory activist. He had previously co-founded the organisation Women2Win, which was designed to ‘encourage women to enter into politics where they can become better acquainted with my penis’, or something. Anyway, as a consequence he was forced to stand down at the 2015 general election and saw his very safe Braintree seat eagerly snaffled up by James Cleverly. Perhaps in the days to come we will see news reports of Neil Parish MP driving a Dominator combine harvester to the vast and fertile underbelly of Ukraine to help with the harvesting of their neglected wheat fields.