Bbc

Nine days of campaigning to go and I haven’t been milkshaked yet. I’ve hung out near McDonald’s in the hope – anything to get ten seconds on the evening news. It seems that in my constituency, the rank, sanctimonious, narcissistic and dim-witted monomaniacs of the new, kind and gentle left are somewhat thin on the ground. Nigel Farage copped a milkshake early on, and members of rival political parties and the BBC tried to pretend they were concerned. It didn’t work with theBBC because when the side-splitting but fabulously unfunny comedienne Jo Brand suggested it would be better to throw battery acid at Farage, she was not sacked or even

Hold your wine glass steady: the BBC has news for you. This week it splashed the news that train drivers in the UK are ‘overwhelmingly middle-aged white men’. The story was accompanied by a picture of a black woman driving a train – under the supervision of a white man, it might be noted – as though to signal that this glass ceiling too can be smashed. Personally I would expect train drivers to be overwhelmingly middle-aged, white and indeed male. Most of the UK is white and half of the UK is male. And the male half of the species tends to be more train-oriented. You don’t see many

Sir Mark Rowley should not resign. We must try to break our habit of getting rid of each Metropolitan Police Commissioner before his/her term is complete. He has done nothing iniquitous or seriously incompetent. He is, however, systematically wrong about the right to protest, elevating it over the much more important right of the general public to own the streets. His parlaying with self-appointed Muslim community leaders privileges them. The weekly Gaza marches in London are effectively mobile no-go areas. This was confirmed by the altercation between Gideon Falter and the police sergeant who told him he was ‘openly Jewish’. It was true that Mr Falter had willed such an

I have become rather obsessed with Martin Bashir and his downfall. Three years ago, I began researching for a play based around his infamous 1995 Panorama interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, which he secured by forging bank statements and reinforcing her belief that there was an Establishment conspiracy against her. When I started writing I thought I would soon understand him. But he still baffles me. When we corresponded recently via email, he suggested playing himself on stage or, failing that, what about Idris Elba? I couldn’t tell if he was joking.   I knew Bashir pretty well back in the day. We were fellow reporters at the BBC and

Home Ben Wallace said he would cease to be the Defence Secretary at the next cabinet reshuffle and would not stand again for parliament. The Conservatives endured three by-elections – at Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Selby and Ainsty and Somerton and Frome. The left-wing mayor of North of Tyne, Jamie Driscoll, resigned from the Labour party after a rival was selected to stand for the newly created mayoralty of the North East. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, said he would not reverse the Conservative limit on claiming child tax credit or universal credit for more than two children. On universities, Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said: ‘Our young people

The story of the famous BBC television presenter who, at the time of writing, has still not been named, has all the elements of 21st-century-media madness – something allegedly sexual which may or not involve a person too young for such things; a desperate hue and cry to see who will dare to name the accused first; anonymous accusers; a clash between strong legal rules about the accused’s anonymity and the strong social media custom of ignoring them; a confusion as to whether the ‘victim’ is a victim or whether he/she even believes he/she is a victim; gabby lawyers; the Sun; an angry mum; a stepfather; ‘fresh allegations’; a ‘concerned’ government