What teachers really do over the summer holidays

Already we’re deep in the school summer holidays. Hell for parents, who still have to keep their kids occupied for weeks on end; heaven for teachers, with all those weeks off.

For those of us fortunate enough to teach in independent schools, the holidays began on 1 July, which by now seems an age ago and we don’t go back to school until September. Two whole months off, on full pay. Long enough to forget about troublesome teenagers; long enough to dream dreams of new careers. A sense of space and peace that lasts… well, until A level results day on 17 August, when reality bites again.

So what do we do with all that time? Sadly, the old cliché – that sir and miss head straight off to France before the crowds and do nothing but sip rosé – is largely true. Though this summer, the mass exodus to the Dordogne was delayed for a week or two after all the riots.

What we teachers certainly don’t do is any constructive reading. That’s for teenagers to worry about. Instead, we indulge ourselves in the kind of low-brow books we wouldn’t be seen dead with in term-time. Each July, I swear I’ll read Middlemarch; by August, I’ll be reaching for that still-untouched copy of Spare – eventually, like everyone else, leaving it unread by the pool for the hotel’s lost property department to deal with.

There’s a problem with so much time; it’s bound to lead to a sense of disappointment. Think what could be achieved: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was written in a month; The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, a staple of school reading lists, in just three days. You, the indolent teacher, have two whole months – more than enough time to pen a classic. Inevitably you’ll be left with a handful of dust when it doesn’t happen.

The biggest danger with so much time off is that, after a few weeks, your brain becomes addled. This is particularly worrying, as whatever else happens during these long summers of laziness, you’re certain, as a teacher, to bump into current or former pupils – usually when you least expect to.

It happened to me last month, just before I set out for France. After two or three weeks off already, I was enjoying a day out in London, about to watch La Traviata at the Royal Opera House. I’d arrived early for a quiet pre-performance beer in the Piazza terrace bar when two trendily-clad teenagers bounded up to me like eager puppies. They were both Radley boys: one had been in my cricket team and both were in the boarding house I was attached to. Yet I completely fluffed their names and visibly struggled to place them:

‘Er, Archie, isn’t it?’

‘Ben, sir. I was in your cricket team last term?’

Not only was this embarrassing – their amused parents were watching from the sidelines – it left me feeling slightly senile. In fairness, it’s difficult to place pupils out of context. But it’s bound to happen each summer and always comes as a shock. It was a shock too to see Radley boys at the opera. They swiftly assured me they were only there because the terrace bar had been tipped on Instagram as one of the best in town.

Even the soothing ferry to France can be fraught with difficulties. Another time, I was just starting to relax with the family, en route to Riberac, when a grinning figure approached me out of the blue on the car deck: ‘Hello sir!’

This time I did recognise him: it was Max. I’d just finished dragging him through A level English.

‘I just wanted to say something to you, sir, now the course is over?’

Of course. Some heartfelt thanks, perhaps?

‘You know that awful Jane Austen book we did sir, Persuasion? I hated it. I burnt it the instant term finished. Just thought you’d like to know that. Have a great holiday!’

For the first time in a while as a teacher, I was lost for words and only calmed down after a family kayak trip down the Dordogne.

Then, remorselessly, along comes results day. The emails will be flying around again, as dozens of parents, plus the head, want instant explanations as to why Archie and Tilly only scored B grades, when you’d predicted ‘certain As’.

And before you know it, you’re back at school again with nothing achieved. So perhaps it’s better not to bother, accept another summer of mediocrity and keep sipping the rosé.  But at some stage in September, Philip Larkin’s words on passing time in his wonderful poem ‘At Grass’ will inevitably spring to mind: ‘Summer by summer all stole away.’  Where did all that time go?

How Cuba was overthrown as the cigar capital of the world

A reputation for excellence has long maintained the status of everything from French wines to Scottish tweed – but globalisation has disproved the myth that the best of any particular product can only come from one country. Cuba is no longer seen as the source of the finest cigars thanks to the increasing dominance of its near neighbour, the Dominican Republic.

This year, Habanos SA – the Havana-based business that oversees all Cuban cigar sales – reported 2022 revenues of $545 million, a 2 per cent increase on the previous 12 months (a figure helped considerably by skyrocketing prices of Cuban cigars).

The Dominican Republic, however, broached the $1 billion mark almost three years ago and exports are still growing, making cigars its fifth-largest export after gold, electrical products, textiles and medical equipment (who knew?).

Much of the country’s success has been fuelled by a significant increase in the production of machine-made cigars and there are now more than 50 factories in the country employing more than 120,000 people. But the DR also leads the field in the type of ‘luxury’, hand-made cigars for which Cuba has long been famous, helping Santiago achieve the title of ‘cigar capital of the world’ through premium smokes such as the Davidoff Aniversario, the Ashton Classic and the Arturo Fuente ‘Hemingway’.

The Dominican Republic began to nose ahead of Cuba and Nicaragua during the so-called ‘cigar boom’ of the early 1990s, but its success didn’t happen overnight – the oldest factory, La Aurora, was founded 120 years ago by an 18-year old called Eduardo León Jimenes.

La Aurora is now the biggest commercial organisation in the DR, but it still prides itself on the hand-rolled, doble figurado ‘perfecto’ cigars of which only 100 are made per day. Since Jimenes established the business, the plantations around Santiago have expanded to cover more than 600,000 acres, not to mention the packaging manufacturers, cigar factories, greenhouses and fertilizer producers.

The Dominican Republic’s cigar-producing boom can be traced back to 1959 when the revolution in Cuba – then by far the world’s leading cigar exporter – led to the nationalisation of industry. Many top growers moved to the slightly less restrictive DR. Soon after that came the assassination of the DR’s murderous dictator General Rafael Trujillo (who ruled the Republic’s cigar business with a rod of iron) and the imposition of an American ban on all Cuban imports. Cuban cigars still can’t be sold in the US.

Someone who has been able to closely observe the rise of the Dominican Republic’s cigar dominance since the turn of the century is Eddie Sahakian who, for the past 30 years, has worked at Davidoff London – the cigar retailer founded by his father, Edward, in 1980.

The fuel behind the success of the Dominican Republic’s cigar business is principally the fact that Cuban products can’t legally be imported into the US, which is far and away the world’s biggest market for cigar sales. If we chart the story back to the early 1990s, the Dominican Republic was really nowhere in terms of global sales and the cigars available here were not very distinguished or sophisticated. But that has changed completely and the fact that everything is driven by private capital – rather than being state-owned [as in Cuba] – has enabled the quality to grow year-on-year through constant investment and innovation.

Dominican Republic’s lead over Cuba has also been helped by decades of global shortages in cigars. Cuba has suffered a combination of natural disasters and the loss of veteran rollers who have either retired or died. That lack of supply has, inevitably, led global retailers to stock an increasing number of New World cigars which, in turn, has helped to raise interest in those from the Dominican Republic.

And, as the DR’s hold on the market has grown stronger, so have its cigars.

Once known for being relatively mild, even bland, the vast range of blends and flavour profiles means there is a Dominican cigar for every taste – so beginners beware starting off with something such as the ‘Double Ligero Chisel’ from La Flor Domenicana or the ‘Power Ranger’ from Carlos Fuente Jnr. The clue, as they say, is in the name.

Modest fun: Red, White & Royal Blue reviewed

Red, White & Royal Blue is a rom-com based on the LGBT bestselling novel by Casey McQuiston. Nope, me neither, but the New York Times reviewed it as ‘a brilliant, wonderful book’ and on Amazon UK it has garnered nearly 44,000 reviews, with an average of 4.5 stars, so let’s not be hasty. The romance here is between ‘America’s First Son and the Prince of Wales’, says the blurb, which does sound juicy, and it’s not a YA (Young Adult) novel but an NA (New Adult) one, apparently, aimed at a slightly older audience. I did consider reading it so that I could say this isn’t as good as the book, as is standard in these instances, but then realised that as an OA (Old Adult) life is too (frighteningly) short and I couldn’t be bothered. But my best guess? Not as good as the book.

Directed by Matthew Lopez, who co-wrote the screenplay with McQuiston, the film wants, I think, to be a Bridgerton-type affair, with its voice-over (Jemma Redgrave) and snappy pace. But it doesn’t have the same wit or knowingness or budget. (The floristry is disappointing. The fake snow is poor. Rooms that are meant to be royal or presidential look like the Premier Inn, tarted up a bit, yet are still an improvement on Frogmore Cottage, a certain couple might say.) The two main characters are Prince Henry, the King’s second son – so not ‘the Prince of Wales’, surely?; isn’t that title exclusively for the heir? – and Alex Claremont-Diaz. They are played by Nicholas Galitzine and Taylor Zakhar Perez, who are both so devastatingly handsome and fit it made this OA’s day.

The film opens outside Buckingham Palace, with crowds thronging The Mall, as it’s the wedding day of Prince Henry’s older brother. Alex is a guest and, for historic reasons, Alex and Henry already hate each other. Alex is vulgar, says Henry. Henry is snobbish, says Alex. Their dislike results in a shove that topples the wedding cake and creates a scandal. Alex is ordered by his mother, America’s President (a surprisingly wooden Uma Thurman), to go make nice to Henry as ‘we have spent the last three years negotiating a trade deal with His Majesty’s government’ and now it is in danger. I’m not sure royals can affect trade deals one way or the other, even if Prince Andrew imagines they are vital.

Narratively, what we have here is our old rom-com friend, the enemies-to-lovers scenario, which is older even than me. (Much Ado About Nothing: is that the first example?) But Alex and Henry switch to lovers surprisingly quickly, beginning with a kiss amid snow so fake that I wasn’t even minded to call out: ‘Boys, put jumpers on!’ The sex scenes are steamy but never explicit. On one occasion, to the sound of unzipping, we cut to Nelson’s Column illuminated at night, which did make me laugh, although whether that was intended, I don’t know. 

The film becomes predominantly about the obstacles set in their way, and how they keep being torn apart, most notably by Buckingham Palace, with its iron grip on traditionalism. The King (Stephen Fry) ambles on latterly to say that Henry must not throw away his future ‘for one infatuation’ and ‘your primary responsibility is your country, not your heart’ and while McQuistan swears she had the idea for this before Meghan and Harry came on the scene, I’m not entirely convinced.

It is modest fun, and there is the occasional good line, but the characters appear rushed and representative rather than living, breathing human beings and, as a result, the actors can offer only limited performances. Overall, it’s like being hit round the head with one of those photo-love stories from Jackie magazine. Probably, there is more depth in the book. But that’s just a guess.

Sturgeon and Murrell have another brush with the law

To say the SNP have a disastrous record on transport would be putting it lightly. The ferries don’t run on time (if at all), the mystery of the motorhome remains unsolved and the nationalists still haven’t dualled Scotland’s most dangerous road. Perhaps then it’s no surprise to hear that former first minister Nicola Sturgeon and her husband (and former party chief executive) Peter Murrell have been caught driving an untaxed car around town. 

It took an awkward phone call from the Sun newspaper for the couple to rectify the late tax, overdue by eight days. Sturgeon and Murrell may now receive a ‘late licensing penalty’ letter and an £80 fine. Mr S appreciates the pair have a lot on their mind just now, but more dealings with the police will hardly remedy their situation.

If Mr S was being generous to the nationalist power couple, he might point out that they are not the first senior SNP figures to have committed driving offences. The party’s deputy leader and former justice secretary Keith Brown had neglected to renew his car tax after it ran out last week. It was an ‘embarrassing blunder’, admitted Brown. Though still not up there in the SNP’s top ten… 

And even First Minister Humza Yousaf has slipped up. Yousaf was fined £300 for driving without insurance while he was none other than the party’s minister for transport. The jokes really do write themselves…

Northern Ireland’s police service is weak and inept

The data breach at the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which has seen the personal details of all serving officers and just under 2,500 civilian staff accidentally released as part of a response to a Freedom of Information request, is the sort of grotesque, IT foul-up normally reserved for the realms of satire like The Thick of It. 

There is a slim chance that any officers in the Province will be laughing. The attempted murder of DCI John Caldwell in front of his young son in Fermanagh earlier this year underlined acutely that dissident republicans hellbent on killing police officers ‘haven’t gone away you know’, to quote Gerry Adams. 

In the excellent series of books, A Force Like No Other, Colin Breen, a former officer with the PSNI’s predecessor force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, sets out through a series of interviews with former colleagues the strange facts of life facing a police officer in Northern Ireland. Checking under cars, rarely socialising and lying about your profession were and remain the norm. 

That abundance of caution has been fundamentally undermined, with obvious ramifications for the safety of officers. Officers in rural areas, those based in places in Northern Ireland where the forces of the Crown are viewed in a dim light such as Londonderry, and Catholic officers who have had to tread carefully in their community as a result of their employment have been put in particular danger. 

This leak is undoubtedly the most serious security failing in the history of policing in Northern Ireland since the 2002 break-in by the IRA at the force’s Castlereagh holding centre; during that episode, the codenames of informers working inside both republican and loyalist terrorist groups were stolen. This is a different order of magnitude. 

There was, however, a smack of inevitability about this. It has been clear for a considerable length of time that the PSNI is no longer an organisation fit for purpose. 

In 2023 alone, the force has been involved in a series of incidents likely to be deemed implausible for the Keystone Cops, ranging from a man being able to simply walk into a police station and climb into a police Land Rover with the keys still in the ignition, to a document containing the names of all officers involved in President Biden’s April visit being found lying in a Belfast street. Only a month ago, documents with the details of over 200 officers were stolen from a private car. 

An atmosphere of distrust now pervades the rank and file towards the force’s senior leadership. Simon Byrne, the chief constable whose period in charge has been characterised by weak stewardship – notably failing to intervene and enforce regulations at the show of strength funeral of the former IRA prisoner Bobby Storey at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic – has returned from his summer holiday and said he will not resign. 

Byrne, who like many of his contemporaries in the mainland seems more interested in PR-friendly, ‘right side of history’ gestures than actual policing, is firmly in the eye of the storm. The local press in Northern Ireland is already reporting that the detail contained within the data leak is much worse than first feared, with implications for members of MI5 and the judiciary. 

Even if Byrne is replaced, his successor will inherit a hollowed out, demoralised and financially crippled organisation. The associated costs of trying to recover from this catastrophe – and presumably, regulatory fines and legal costs associated with cases brought by individual officers – will strain the PSNI, already facing a £141m funding gap. 

The episode is a grimly fitting motif for the wider malaise afflicting Northern Ireland. Failing, directionless public services and a culture where gaffes and missteps are baked into and expected of some of the cornerstone institutions of daily life. If the police cannot manage an Excel spreadsheet, it is fair to ask what hope do the people they are meant to protect have.

Wilko is just the first zombie company to come a cropper

It will be harder to pick up a last-minute light bulb. You might have to rely on Amazon Prime for a quick delivery of new tea towels. And your local shopping centre will look even more dismally empty than it already does. 

There will, in fairness, be some disadvantages to the hardware chain Wilko disappearing. And yet there is no point in pretending that it is any great loss. In reality, it was one of many ‘zombie’ companies, kept alive by artificially low interest rates. Now that capital costs money again, many more will go bust. 

Wilko announced today that it was going into administration, and that its 400 stores are now likely to close, with the potential loss of 12,000 jobs. The chain had been looking for a savior for months. It is of course, terrible news for the staff, if rather less for the customers, who were hardly thronging to buy anything there. 

The important point, however, is that Wilko is just one of the first victims of the return to normal interest rates. When the Bank of England slashed rates to close to zero after the financial crisis of 2008 it might have avoided a deep recession. But it also created a lot of what economists call ‘zombie businesses’: they could borrow so cheaply they could just about stay alive, but they couldn’t grow, and they didn’t make any real money. They just staggered on. But now that capital costs 5 per cent-plus, instead of just 0.1 per cent, the financial outlook for companies like Wilko has dramatically changed. It couldn’t roll over its debts. Nor could anyone borrow lots of money very cheaply, and come in to the rescue it, as would almost certainly have happened a year ago. The result? It has finally had to close down.

It will not be the last. The accountants BDO recently estimated that ‘zombies’ could account for as much as 12 per cent of the British economy. Other estimates have put the total as high as 20 per cent. One point is certain: it is a lot. We are just starting to see the impact of a return to a ‘normal’ rate of interest on the economy. It is already clear that there will be a wave of collapses, and Wilko will just be the first of many. The economy might well be in better shape once the ‘living dead’ disappear, but there will be a lot of pain as they collapse. 

Why surging oil prices aren’t yet worth worrying about

For once we are having an old-fashioned silly season, with no pandemic, no insurgency by the Taliban, no leadership election in the Tory party and no energy crisis – with the result that a few migrants moving onto a barge has become the main story of the week. Or at least we didn’t seem to have an oil crisis until Tuesday, when European wholesale gas prices suddenly surged by 40 per cent, from €30 per MWh to over €40 per MWh. It was a reaction, it seems, to a strike in Australia which has compromised the country’s exports of liquified natural gas (LNG). Since the Ukrainian invasion, Europe has become increasingly dependent on LNG imports by ships, and while few of them emanate from Australia (the US and Qatar are the main sources), we are still exposed to international markets.

Various voices have warned over the past few months to beware of renewed energy crisis this winter: that we are far from being out of the woods. But it helps to put Tuesday’s surge into perspective. Last August, European wholesale gas prices peaked at over €300 per MWh. They then fell more or less steadily until June, when there was another short-lived spike. This week’s surge doesn’t quite take prices back to where they were just two months ago.

We may have to get used to a summer surge in oil and gas prices as European countries rush to fill their reserves in preparation for the winter. That was what happened last August. Once the reserves were full, oil and gas prices fell back sharply. The good news is that reserves are currently a lot higher than they usually are this time of year, so there is little chance of a repeat of last year’s panic-buying.

We are also unlikely to see a repeat of fantasy claims that gas energy is ‘nine times higher’ than wind energy. That was a figure endlessly repeated by fans of green energy this time last year. But it was never true. It derived from an erroneous comparison between the long-term guaranteed ‘strike’ prices offered to owners of wind and solar farms with the ‘day ahead’ prices for gas – i.e. the price that the energy companies had to pay to persuade the owners of gas plants to turn them on for a few hours at short notice to make up for a shortfall in wind and solar energy. It was like comparing the price of a season ticket with the cost of hailing an Uber during the rush hour on the day of a rail strike.

This year, the figures are very different. Not only are gas prices much lower, but the cost of building wind farms has surged. The ‘nine times cheaper’ claim was fed by an auction last July in which Swedish wind farm operator Vattenfall successfully bid to supply electricity from its proposed Norfolk Boreas wind farm for 15 years at £37.35 per megawatt hour (at 2012 prices, indexed with inflation). Two weeks ago, however, Vattenfall cancelled the project, claiming that it was no longer profitable at the price it had agreed.

The cost of wind energy (along with solar energy) fell sharply in the decade to 2019, but a rise in commodity prices, along with the surge in interest rates, has caused a sharp turnaround – with many wind farm operators now complaining that projects will not be profitable. The claim, made by Ed Miliband and others, that huge investment in renewable energy could protect us against sky-high prices of fossil fuels is looking somewhat forlorn.   

Why can’t we just leave the European Convention on Human Rights?

Anyone reading the news over the past two days could be forgiven for feeling a certain sense of déjà vu. Senior figures in government, including an unnamed cabinet minister, have suggested that if Rwanda flights removing asylum seekers are blocked by the courts, Conservatives would ‘inevitably’ back moves to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. The Telegraph reports that up to a third of the cabinet are prepared to back leaving the convention. Backbenchers are restless.  

These threats to leave the ECHR seem to recur cyclically. Whether the issue is prisoners voting, deporting foreign criminals, or stopping small boats, the convention is inescapably the villain of the day.

Keen observers might note that this is not the first time that the Conservatives have taken aim at human rights laws. In their 2010 election manifesto, the party promised to ‘replace the Human Rights Act with a UK Bill of Rights’. The 2015 manifesto went further and claimed that they would ‘scrap the Human Rights Act and curtail the role of the European Court of Human Rights, so that foreign criminals can be more easily deported from Britain.’

Following the 2019 election, we saw the introduction of Dominic Raab’s much derided Bill of Rights Bill which would have repealed the Human Rights Act and reformed domestic human rights laws. The Bill was introduced in June 2022, but it never received a second reading. It was withdrawn in June 2023.  

These unhappy precedents may go some way to explain why the government’s official position is that the UK will remain in the ECHR and abide by its international treaty obligations.

I believe that the ECHR does far more good than harm, and it would be extremely troubling if the UK became the only European democracy to leave the convention (joining the select club of Russia and Belarus). But anyone who truly wishes to exit the ECHR might be forgiven for being confused. The government retains a large majority, the convention allows parties to exit. And it seems very likely that, even if the government wins its case on Rwanda in the Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights will intervene in some way. So why can’t we just leave now? Why is it always jam tomorrow?

The truth is that the UK has baked in the ECHR into a number of other agreements and it is hard to see how it would be possible for the UK to depart the convention without causing some significant problems (potentially resulting in the UK breaching its obligations under international law).

Almost inevitably, the first issue relates to Northern Ireland. The Good Friday Agreement makes specific reference to the ECHR and states, in clear terms, that it will be used as a ‘safeguard’ to protect all sections of the community and that it will be incorporated into Northern Ireland law.

The text of the ECHR makes clear that it is not possible to restrict the jurisdiction of the convention to Northern Ireland, in the manner of the NI Protocol. State parties to the ECHR are required to ‘secure to everyone within their jurisdiction’ the rights and freedoms set out in the convention. Simply put, denouncing the ECHR would ultimately lead to the UK breaching the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

The second issue relates to the UK’s relations with the European Union. While the ECHR is not EU law (rather it is a convention overseen by the Council of Europe, which comprises 46 member states) the EU included references to the ECHR in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement agreed with Boris Johnson’s government in 2020. This relates in particular to law enforcement and judicial cooperation. Put bluntly, if the UK left the ECHR, cooperation on issues such as extradition and criminal records would come to an end, since they are dependent on parties’ adherence to the convention.

Respect for the rule of law and human rights is also set out as one of the ‘essential elements’ of the 2020 Brexit agreement, the breach of which could justify the termination of the deal. This would be a nuclear option and seems unlikely, but it is something the government would have to consider.  

Finally, if the UK denounced the ECHR, it would also likely depart from the Council of Europe. While the ECHR is the Council’s most famous achievement, it is responsible for many other multinational treaties – including the Istanbul convention (combating violence against women) which the UK ratified in 2022. It is also responsible for conventions on trafficking and cybercrime. The Council of Europe is an effective forum for international cooperation. Having exited the EU, it might be regrettable if the UK states that it is also unwilling to cooperate with its neighbours on these issues.  

There are many positive reasons to remain a member of the ECHR. It is also far from evident that exiting the convention would have any significant impact on the UK’s ability to tackle illegal migration – particularly considering the enormous cost of the Rwanda plan and the number of migrants arriving on small boats. And it would be understandable if Rishi Sunak did not wish to open fresh wounds over Northern Ireland or the UK’s relations with the EU.  

There will be plenty of cynics who believe that the government is simply using the issue as a political dividing line with Labour. But even those who support leaving the EHCR might have to concede that exiting the convention is likely to remain an undeliverable political promise.

Rishi’s target creeps away as NHS backlog climbs

Yet another of Rishi Sunak’s five targets looks to have slipped out of reach. Waiting lists for NHS treatment in England have climbed to another record high and now stand just shy of 7.6 million. There was a slight improvement for the longest waits: those waiting more than a year dropped slightly but still stand at a staggering 383,000. A very unlucky 314 have found themselves languishing on the lists for more than two years. Ministers gave the NHS a target to clear waits of more than 65 weeks by April next year, but there’s been little progress on those either.

NHS managers were quick to blame strike action – Junior Doctors are set to walk out again over pay tomorrow from 7a.m. The health services’ figures point to over 100,000 appointments being postponed in June alone. Overall, the NHS says, nearly 800,000 appointments have now been rescheduled due to strikes. Industrial action may offer Sunak a way out of his pledge.

Elsewhere, the NHS is on course for its busiest summer ever. A&Es in England have seen their second busiest July on record with 2.1 million patients showing up – though that’s still fewer than the last July before the pandemic hit. When combined with June, though, it adds up to over 4.4 million attendances which would be the busiest summer for emergency departments ever (the previous high being the summer of 2022). The ambulance service also experienced its busiest month since May last year with just under 700,000 incidents in July.

There was better news in tests and diagnostics: with a record month for cancer checks and 16 per cent more general diagnostic tests carried out in June than the same month pre-pandemic. The NHS also looks on track to hit its target of 10,000 so-called ‘virtual ward beds’ available by September, with the current figure now at 9,713. These virtual ward beds mean people stay at home and receive remote care from medical staff, freeing up beds inside hospitals.

With autumn approaching, it’s hard to see how the NHS and Sunak can pull this one back. Painfully slow progress is being made on the longest waits, and all the while new patients join the backlog. What’s more, forecasts by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and others expect the lists to keep climbing well into next year. It seems for Rishi this will be another target missed.

Labour is closing in on a vulnerable SNP

Every few weeks I write a ‘Why isn’t Scottish Labour ahead in the polls yet?’ piece. Here is the latest instalment and the take away is: Labour still hasn’t sealed the deal but it continues to close in on a vulnerable SNP. New polling from Redfield and Wilton shows the SNP retaining its three-point lead over Labour in Westminster voting intentions, with the Nationalists on 37 per cent and Labour on 34 per cent. Plugging these figures into the Electoral Calculus prediction tool gives the SNP 27 seats and Labour 22. If the next election played out this way, the SNP would have failed to win a majority of Scottish seats for the first time since 2015. 

Even so, given the events of the past six months, Labour might have been expected to be leading consistently by now. The SNP has lost its most successful leader in Nicola Sturgeon after a punishing row about the housing of Adam Graham (Isla Bryson), a convicted rapist, in a women’s prison. Then there was the messy leadership election, followed by police raids and internal tensions over the Holyrood coalition with the Greens. Plus the collapse of key policies on recycling and fishing, a rising bill for incomplete ferries and Humza Yousaf’s decision to keep gender reform front and centre. 

Gender reform is the Scottish government’s most unpopular policy, with an approval rating of minus 19 per cent. Only Labour can’t capitalise on that because Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar whipped his MSPs to vote for the SNP-Green legislation. Beyond this, Labour has failed to gain traction on other areas where the Scottish government’s approval rating is minus double digits: the economy, housing and drugs policy. Voters are clearly beginning to have second thoughts about the SNP but they still seem unsure about Labour. Asked about their preferred First Minister, Scots prefer Yousaf over Sarwar by a margin of five points. 

Despite this, there are signs of progress for Labour. Sarwar may trail Yousaf for First Minister but he is ahead by 13 points in overall job approval. Sir Keir Starmer’s approval rating is up among Scottish voters, standing at plus 2 per cent. The next Holyrood election isn’t until 2026 but Labour has edged ahead of the SNP in voting intentions for the second (regional list) ballot, albeit by one point. Labour’s strategy of attacking both the Scottish and UK governments would appear to chime with the voters. Questioned on competence, voters deem the former incompetent by a margin of 14 points and the latter by 49 points. Rishi Sunak’s approval rating has also dropped eight points to minus 28 per cent. 

So, why isn’t Scottish Labour ahead in the (Westminster) polls yet? Well, for one, the election is at least another 12 months away. For another, the floor of SNP support is artificially inflated by the independence issue. The Redfield and Wilton poll puts support for independence at 48 per cent when don’t knows are excluded, and while 73 per cent of SNP voters say they’d vote to secede from the UK, only 42 per cent of Labour voters say the same. The national question continues to be the SNP’s trump card among a section of the electorate. That doesn’t mean Labour’s ceiling is 22 seats, but it does mean that to come first in seats, it will either have to win over more independence supporters or hope the SNP does something to shed some of them or other members of its electoral coalition. 

Despite my scepticism, I’m not convinced that Labour can’t win a plurality of Scottish seats next year. It would be a gruelling feat and involve effort, persuasion, positioning and luck – but it’s not impossible if Labour can convince voters that it’s the fresh alternative to two stale, failing governments in Edinburgh and London. 

Mhairi Black needs to grow up

When 20-year old Mhairi Black was elected in 2015, she became the youngest MP for over 300 years. Eight years later, it seems that the ‘baby of the house’ has yet to grow up. Speaking at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Black has likened gender critical campaigners to white supremacists, and suggested that they were funded by ‘fundamental Christian groups in America, Baptist groups [and] anti-abortion organisations.’

It’s doubtful whether Black reached even the ad hominem level of debate as she dismissed those who disagreed with her in the febrile row over transgender rights. When asked if she believe that someone with a different philosophical view to her could still be ‘a thoroughly decent person’, Black replied, ‘If you keep it to yourself, aye.’

Name calling and silencing are the tools of the playground bully. But as she laid into those she dismissed as ‘bad actors’ and ‘50-year-old Karens’, what came over to me was a total lack of self-awareness. Trans people should be left ‘the hell alone’, Black declared. I wish you – and your party – had had done just that, Mhairi. Instead, you made a political football out of us.

Back in 2015, trans rights were hardly on the political agenda. The Equality Act, passed five years earlier, made it unlawful to treat transsexual people less favourably in things like employment, housing and the provision of goods and services. We also enjoyed specific protection from hate crime – though the UK was hardly a hotbed of transphobia – while the Gender Recognition Act allowed transsexuals with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria to change the sex marked on our birth certificates. Few had invoked that right – in my case because I had no need to lie about the past in order to live in the present. I suspect that I am far from unique in that respect.

But the SNP cared little about that when it seized on self-identification of legal gender as the way forward for Scotland. The only people who got much of a hearing were those who told the party exactly what it wanted to hear – that Scotland could allow transgender-identified males to self-identify their way into women’s spaces, women associations and even women’s prisons, and all would be well. The party didn’t care what rational and sensible people had to say.

Many warned them, including For Women Scotland and the Edinburgh-based policy analysis collective, Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. In a final display of hubris, the SNP even ignored Reem Alsalem – the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against Women and Girls – when she pointed out that, ‘the ongoing efforts to reform existing legislation by the Scottish government do not sufficiently take into consideration the specific needs of women and girls in all their diversity, particularly those at risk of male violence.’

We all know what happened next – a violent male rapist ended up in a women’s prison, and Nicola Sturgeon resigned as First Minister. Yes, there were far more problems facing the SNP than its ill-fated Gender Recognition Reform Bill, but the party was left looking ridiculous. As the principle of self-ID unravelled, Humza Yousaf argued that the rapist – Isla Bryson – was merely ‘at it’ and ‘not a genuine trans woman’.

Grown-up politicians might have learned from observing that humiliating experience. Not so Mhairi Black. Back to the present, she argues that the only place where sex, not gender, should matter is in a medical setting. Fiddlesticks! Maybe she could elaborate on the implications of such naïve thinking to women athletes who worry about men self-identifying their way into female sport, or children who want to uphold their right to single-sex toilets and changing facilities in schools.

Instead, she opined that, ‘Being trans is not something to be feared. It’s just an aspect of a human being.’ Once again, Black totally misses the point. The truth is that being trans does not change anyone’s sex, and when sex matters, everyone’s rights matter. When Black said that trans people should not be made into an intellectual debate, I wondered how much inkling she has about the need for intellectual debate on such profound changes to policy. Maybe she simply does not understand that safeguarding weaknesses will be a magnet to anyone looking to exploit the rules?

Black had already announced that she is stepping down at the next election. It will not be a moment too soon.

Germans fork out €55,000 for Merkel’s hair and make-up

Move over Nicola Sturgeon, there’s a new sheriff in town. The former SNP leader has faced criticism this week, after it emerged that her government splurged just under £10,000 on VIP airport services for her and her staff – despite foreign affairs being a reserved power.

When it comes to taking the mickey out of taxpayers though, it’s clear that the Germans really are doing it better. According to Freedom of Information requests submitted by the Tagesspiegel newspaper, German taxpayers have had to fork out €55,000 on former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s hair and make-up since she left office in 2021. In this year alone, Merkel has already managed to rack up a €17,200 bill, and spent €37,000 in 2022 – reportedly on a self-employed hair and makeup artist who works as a fashion designer in Berlin. Whatever happened to the good old short back and sides?

Apparently the expenses cover both public and private events, with the German Chancellery telling Tagesspiegel that, ‘The assumption of costs is linked to the performance of continuing official duties — regardless of whether they are public or non-public’.

Other German officials have gotten in on the act, with the current Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s office spending €21,808 on hair and makeup this year – quite impressive for a politician who is not exactly hirsute.

Britain is not immune to former premiers living off the largesse of the state, unfortunately. Under the current rules, any former Prime Minister can claim up to  £115,000 a year for expenses incurred while fulfilling public duties associated with being a former PM. Which considering the way we’re getting through prime ministers right now (five in the last eight years) means that the country is racking up a healthy bill – over half a million in 2020-2021.

Given the fact that David Cameron once gave his hairdresser an MBE, perhaps it’s only time before we start shelling out for haircuts too…

‘Get the boats done’ – could there be a referendum on the ECHR?

It’s ‘stop the boats’ week in 10 Downing Street as part of government plans to avoid a news vacuum over the summer recess. There have been a range of announcements – from new measures against businesses that knowingly employ illegal migrants, along with plans to crackdown on ‘lefty lawyers’. However, Rishi Sunak’s problem can be summed up by his deputy chairman Lee Anderson – who declared on Tuesday that the government has ‘failed’ to stop migrants crossing the Channel in small boats. While this is not the official line from the government, it does reflect concerns that Sunak’s pledge to ‘stop the boats’ could end in failure.

It’s why talk of leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is once again dominating the news. The Telegraph reports that Sunak will face calls from up to a third of his cabinet to put leaving the European Convention on Human Rights in the election manifesto if migrant deportation flights to Rwanda are blocked by the courts. The next court battle is likely to take place in the autumn when the government will go to the Supreme Court to challenge the Court of Appeal’s ruling that the Rwanda scheme is unlawful.

As I have previously reported in The Spectator, a referendum on leaving the ECHR has long been seen in government as an option if progress cannot be made elsewhere. Sunak would first need to be convinced that leaving the ECHR is necessary – for example, if Strasbourg does somehow manage to frustrate the Rwanda scheme or the UK courts find against the government and declare Rwanda an unsafe country.

The Tories could then pledge a referendum on leaving the ECHR in their manifesto, hoping to reconvene the Brexit alliance of voters that delivered the 2019 majority. (The assumption is that the public would support the Rwanda scheme by a margin of two to one.) ‘It’s either stop the boats or leave the ECHR,’ says one senior Tory. ‘We could say “get the boats done” and run a “stop the boats” election,’ argued one government adviser to me earlier this year. They point to the ‘stop the boats’ campaign in Australia, which is viewed by several senior Tories as a way to keep elements of the Johnson electorate on side.

Proponents argue there would be an emotive case to make. It would include other elements of the ECHR which can thwart UK government aims, such as Article 8 that can stop criminal deportations on the basis of the right to family life. One figure close to Sunak suggests that the PM could even campaign to leave the ECHR in the event of a referendum – casting it as a point of high principle, democracy and sovereignty.

However, a referendum on whether to leave the ECHR would divide the Tory party. Attorney General Victoria Prentis is among those who have warned against leaving – the ECHR is written into the Good Friday Agreement and Brexit deal. But if immigration numbers stay high and Sunak can’t stop the boats, it may be the one lever he has left to pull.

Prince Harry could learn from the Japanese royals

Plain old Harry Windsor, as he is now, is in Japan for the International Sports Promotion Summit and a few low-key engagements before moving on to Singapore for a polo tournament fundraising for AIDS. The relaxed and happy looking former prince was welcomed with enthusiasm and characteristic courtesy by well-wishers as he arrived alone, wearing an Archewell branded cap, at Tokyo’s Haneda airport. Winningly, Harry flew commercial and didn’t use the VIP pathway to navigate the airport. ‘It’s good to see you again’ he said to reporters and added he’d be ‘happy to live here if you’d have me’ and actually looked as though he meant it.

This is Harry’s first overseas outing as an ex-royal. But whatever his official designation, Harry Windsor is very much still seen as a royal in Japan. Princess Diana was idolised here ever since making an enormous impression when she visited with Prince Charles in 1986 and the Japanese press refer to prince William as ‘Diana’s first born’. Harry remains big-ish in Japan and popular: Finding Freedom is one of the few royal books to get a full Japanese release.

Not that there is ever a ‘Prince’ Harry event without any hint of controversy. The sports summit he is attending seems to be being funded by the slightly mysterious  Haruhisa Handa, a new age guru and head of the Shinto based religion World Mate, which has been embroiled in various scandals over the years. Handa who has written over 200 self-help books preaching happiness through spirituality and material prosperity and once issued a picture of himself at the centre of the Last Supper, shared a stage with Harry for the press conference. It is not clear how close the two are or should be.

Whatever Harry got up to here was likely to be of interest though, as in contrast, the Japanese royal family is unremittingly dull. ‘What do they do? They just wave.’ one of my students remarked recently when we were comparing the state of the two royal houses. When I tentatively suggested the British royal family was in trouble for being over-exposed and scandalised to the point of ridicule, while the Japanese royal house was losing the interest and, to an extent, the support of the people for the opposite reason, my thesis was enthusiastically accepted.

Dull though it may be, there are things to be learned from how the Japanese royals deport themselves and how the institution manages their crises, and especially the somewhat analogous (to Megxit) case of Princess Mako. One of the Japanese royal family’s highest profile young members abandoned the imperial household and a life of duty and devotion to the nation and now lives a life of relative simplicity in New York with the love of her life. Princess Mako’s reasonably successful ‘I’m a royal get me out of here’ maneuver offers an intriguing template for how it can be done.

The daughter of the emperor’s brother, former Princess Mako (once touted as a prospective Japanese Diana) left the royal family and lost her royal status when she married outside the nobility to an aspiring lawyer Kei Komuro. It was quite a scandal at the time, dividing the country into those that saw Mako as selfish and ungrateful and those that sympathised with her position. She defused some of the criticism by relinquishing not just her title but an official wedding and a sizeable dowry from the state (reportedly 1.3 million dollars).

And what happened next? Mako seems to have almost disappeared. After one rather stilted and scripted press conference, she departed and now lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan with her law graduate husband. She is interning (unpaid) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, apparently making use of her studies (at Edinburgh, Leicester and elsewhere) into history. There is no Montecito mansion, no celebrity pals, no Netflix specials, no podcasts, no tell-all books, no worldwide privacy tours.

Mako and Kei are spotted out and about in New York from time to time, hand in hand, loved up and free. They are believed to be financially independent and appear to live modestly, wearing ordinary, inexpensive, casual clothes and shopping for coat hangers and pillowcases in the same shops as everyone else. They ride the subway, and the public bus. Mako once got lost and had to ask passersby (who wouldn’t know who she was) for directions. They have no ‘brand’ and no message for the world. They don’t win or appear to want to win humanitarian awards. They are unpretentious, anonymous, and, seemingly, content with their lot.

Harry Windsor take note.

Real cyclists don’t use e-bikes

An impossible 45 years ago, I decided the moment had come to get back on my pushbike. I had long hated the way the motor car was taking over the world and wanted to play my part in changing this.

I also had a more selfish reason. After two years on the Fleet Street diet of lunchtime excess, I could already see my first heart attack was not far off. I was in my late twenties and getting almost no exercise. I knew of people in the newspaper business who did so little walking that the uppers of their shoes wore out before the soles did. Something had to be done.

In those days, bikes had not moved on since my childhood days, pedalling my heavy green Hercules over the Sussex Downs on summer afternoons. The brakes were as feeble, especially in the wet. The Sturmey-Archer three-speed gears were just the same.

The big difference was that there were millions more cars, and their drivers all hated me. I remember many things about those early days as a militant cyclist in the nation’s capital. I recall the morning my rattling second-hand bike was stolen by a middle-aged geezer in a tweed jacket, who managed to escape even though I was beating him round the head with a bag of dirty laundry at the time. I especially recall the struggle to get up Primrose Hill on my first two-wheeled journey home. The way in had been all downhill. But this was a serious gradient, and I was not going to give up and get off. As a result, I almost lost consciousness. The months of browsing and sluicing on the Daily Express had already begun to clog my cardiovascular system, and I swear I could feel actual globs of fat detaching themselves from the insides of my arteries as I heaved myself upwards. Until then I had just suspected this was important. Afterwards I knew.

I joined campaigns. I planned my routes to avoid the hatred of car-drivers and the indifference of lorries and buses. I thought it might make sense to ride across the middle of the Hyde Park Corner roundabout, rather than holding my breath and joining the rivers of steel which flowed around the junction. So it would have been, except that constables appeared from a tiny police station in the Wellington Arch and crossly ordered me off. The path (now an established bike route) was in those days reserved entirely for the royal family and their fleet of large cars.

Since then, most things about cycling have grown far better. Machines are lighter, brakes hugely more efficient, gears luxurious, reflective clothing and lights immeasurably improved (though I remain baffled by the widespread habit of wearing a Styrofoam bowl on your head). Cycle paths and tracks are everywhere. Quite a few drivers show cyclists courtesy and consideration.

But there are bad things too, not least the other cyclists who cut me up by undertaking me, or give us all a bad name by slicing through pedestrian crossings. But these are as nothing beside the menace of the electric bike and the e-scooter.

For decades we fought for segregated cycle paths where no motor vehicle was allowed, and we finally won. But no sooner had we done so than they began to be invaded by things which look like bicycles to the uninitiated but are in fact electric motorbikes. They are astonishingly heavy. Try to pick up one of these things as it lies on its side on the pavement (as they so often do). Typically, they weigh more than five stone (a normal pedal bike weighs about two). Officially limited to about 15mph, they can easily be tweaked to go much, much faster. This is technically illegal, but can you tell me who is checking? Then there are the ‘cargo bikes’ which can weigh about 12 stone and carry loads of about the same. If one of these hits you at any kind of speed, it will do you serious damage. So their arrival on cycle tracks undoes 40 years of campaigning to segregate muscle-powered, light, silent, clean cycles from engine-powered, whining, polluting, heavy vehicles.

May I just mention here that ‘e-bikes’ and their hideous cousins, e-scooters, are powered by batteries, which are charged by power stations. And much British power is imported from the Netherlands, which still uses fossil fuels to make some of its electricity. Thus, a million smug expressions on the faces of the users of such vehicles are completely unjustified. I have personal reasons to go further, having visited hideous mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from which the metals for the batteries are grubbed by gaunt children on starvation pay. There is nothing ethical about these machines.

I have broken off relations with my local cycling lobby in Oxford, Cyclox, partly because they continue to treat e-bikes as the equivalent of proper bikes. Their attitude is common. The FT’s Henry Mance is typical of metropolitan trendies in praising them, gushing recently: ‘Have you ridden an electric bike? If not, you should probably stop reading this article and go find one. Hire one on the street. Borrow your neighbour’s. Steal one if you have to. Sat on the saddle, with the help of the motor, you will magically become half as old and twice as fit.’

Henry, you will absolutely not become twice as fit. Electric bikes cannot give you the exercise that proper muscle-powered machines provide. Claims are made that they offer some sort of fitness, but if I had ridden one of those things up Primrose Hill all those years ago, I doubt I would have discovered the vast and lasting health benefits that hard pedalling provides to anybody who wants it.

If people want to ride motorbikes, let them, once they’ve passed a severe test (as I have in fact done). But please don’t pretend these things have any of the benefits of a proper old-fashioned bicycle.

Watch Peter Hitchens debate Henry Mance on Spectator TV

Testosterone transformed my life. Why won’t GPs prescribe it?

Last summer, I became a participant in a covert drugs deal. I have never considered doing anything illegal, but I was desperate. This is how it happened.

I was on a weekend away with friends, some of whom were women in their forties and fifties. I discovered that one friend, who lives an ex-pat life in a Middle Eastern country with fantastic private healthcare, had recently been given testosterone gel as part of her HRT medication. She had noticed a sharp and very welcome improvement. She reported feeling more alert, less forgetful, more able to get up off the sofa and be active and less likely to anxiously sweat the small stuff.

I was fascinated. I had been on HRT (oestrogen and progesterone) for about six months, but I still felt terrible. Pre–menopause, I was full of energy. I trained twice a week at a martial arts club and went to regular boot camps and boxing classes. Now, even with HRT, I was often in pain, exhausted and unable to focus. I’d find myself procrastinating for hours.

As we were packing at the end of the weekend, my friend took pity on me. ‘Here,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve got a spare.’ She slipped a tiny silver package into my palm. ‘Testosterone gel, 50mg, should last you a good few weeks.’

‘How do I take it?’

‘You squeeze out a pea-sized lump every day and just rub it on to your thigh.’

At home, it took me a while to be bold enough to snip open the illicit packet. I wanted to do some research first and be sure that trying a small amount wouldn’t land me in hospital or with an unexpected beard. When I summoned the courage to apply it, my pea-sized amounts were more petits pois than the large garden variety.

Even so, within a week, I noticed a formidable transformation. I felt more alert, less stressed, more flexible, less prone to dithering. I slept more deeply. Finally, I felt like myself again and I began to wonder why on earth the NHS doesn’t offer testosterone to all women taking HRT.

Testosterone is mostly associated with being male but before about 50, women naturally produce this third hormone along with oestrogen and progesterone.

All those symptoms of the menopause that celebrities now ‘raise awareness’ of – headaches, hot flushes, insomnia, weight gain, joint pain, backache, irritableness, depression, forgetfulness, confusion, anxiety– can be the result of a lack of testosterone just as much as a lack of oestrogen.

Sometimes the symptoms of menopause are so severe that women who may have only just re-entered the workforce after bringing up children end up reducing their hours or leaving their jobs because they feel bewildered and unable to cope. Considering that women make up nearly half the UK workforce, you can see that this has major economic implications. Then think of all the unpaid caring we do – looking after our elderly parents and supporting children. You’d have thought it would make sense to dose us up.

After I found the missing part of my hormonal jigsaw, and as the little silver sachet slowly began to be used up, I booked an appointment with my GP. A thorough online search revealed that I could not buy this stuff anywhere. It really would have to be prescribed, but at that point I had no doubt I could persuade my GP. Testosterone had, after all, transformed my life.

Instead of a prescription, however, I received a lecture on how short the NHS is of funds and how money must be allocated to those who need it most. I was told I would have to be seen by a menopause specialist if I wanted testosterone – and there was at least a two-year waiting list.

In an attempt to lighten the mood, towards the end of my appointment the GP said: ‘We don’t want you suddenly turning into a man do we?’ Then she seemed to check herself and said quite seriously: ‘Of course, if anyone does want to become a man that’s absolutely OK and we can definitely have a conversation about hormones for that.’

I left without questioning her further, but can that really be true? I cannot get the hormone I need as a middle-aged woman, but if I were to pretend to be transitioning, the NHS would hand it over?

Recent reports suggest that there is a shortage of testosterone due to increased demand. Middle-aged men who think their libido needs a boost, women who are transitioning and middle–aged women are now all clamouring for it. The irony, though, is that whereas for older women who lack the hormone, testosterone can be very helpful, for younger women who already have the correct levels, extra testosterone can lead to significant health problems.

The NHS website explains that previously licensed testosterone preparations for female use in the UK were discontinued for commercial, not medical reasons. So for all the endless ‘menopause awareness’ campaigns and documentaries hosted by Davina McCall, it’s clear that the trouble isn’t just a temporary shortage of supply – but that the NHS simply doesn’t consider middle-aged women to be worth the price of testosterone.

Tom Marquand was the star of Goodwood

On no course in Britain does jockeyship count for more than at undulating, tricksy Goodwood and although Frankie Dettori was able, on his final appearance there, to treat the expectant crowd to a couple of flying dismounts after victories on Epictetus and Kinross, the week’s top rider was clearly Tom Marquand. One racing sage told me during the week, ‘Racing will desperately need another Frankie to engage the public’s attention’ – and when I proffered Tom and his wife Hollie Doyle as a twosome who could do so together, the rejoinder was: ‘Of course Tom’s got the ability but he’s just too nice.’ He meant that you simply couldn’t imagine Tom Marquand winning headlines by stealing another jockey’s whip mid-race like Lester Piggott or scrumping a trainer’s cigars.

But what we did see from Marquand T. at Goodwood was a masterclass in opportunism, timing and sheer courage. On Hughie Morrison’s long-striding Quickthorn Tom simply stole the Goodwood Cup by going more than 20 lengths clear of the field, getting the fractions exactly right for the rest of the two miles and still having six lengths left at the line. He’d won the Lonsdale Cup at York on Quickthorn last year the same way.

This time Tom declared post-race: ‘There’s no masterplan with him. Down at the gates Frankie looked across and joked “Are you going to drop him in?” [i.e. hold Quickthorn up at the back], because everybody knows what he’s going to do and they can’t stop him.’ Tom insisted that the other jockeys shouldn’t be criticised for letting Quickthorn get away, adding, ‘He’s a relentless galloper and you think no horse can keep that up. I wouldn’t be putting down the other lads in behind. I would be giving my lad credit for going such a gallop.’

As he said it, I couldn’t help remembering the 2020 Derby when the unknown Emmet McNamara on the 25-1 Aidan O’Brien outsider Serpentine scooted 12 lengths clear early on and held on to win. The established jockeys behind him were heavily criticised for letting Serpentine get away – and who finished second in that race on Khalifa Sat, but one Tom Marquand?

On the final quagmire day at Goodwood Tom won the Lillie Langtry Stakes in similar front-running style on the 25-1 Sumo Sam, having picked up the ride at the last minute when Neil Callan couldn’t do the weight. On top-weight Hamish in the King’s Plate Marquand waited patiently, picked off the field from three out and led inside the final furlong. Bringing home the King’s horse Desert Hero in the Gordon Stakes was a more desperate matter with trainer’s wife Maureen Haggas admitting to having kittens in the stands as the pair weaved about looking for room in the last two furlongs before a gap finally appeared. ‘Sometimes at Goodwood you have to be a bit brave,’ was the jockey’s comment – and to the joy of the racing community the King and Queen’s racing adviser John Warren indicated afterwards that Desert Hero is likely now to be routed to the final classic, the St Leger.

Just how difficult life at Goodwood can become for unwary riders was evidenced in the Nassau Stakes when the odds-on favourite Blue Rose Cen was ridden by a French jockey Aurelien Lemaitre with no experi-ence of Goodwood. He became hopelessly boxed in on the rail by a cluster of English opponents and the best horse in the race was given no chance of unwinding the kind of effort that had won her the French equivalents of the Guineas and the Oaks.

One rider you can count on to handle Goodwood is Andrea Atzeni, but sadly Frankie Dettori isn’t the only popular Italian-born rider we may not be seeing again in Sussex for a while. Post-race chats with the ever-smiling Atzeni have always a pleasure but life has been harder for him after his retainer with Sheikh Obaid concluded and he has accepted an offer to ride in Hong Kong. Goodwood successes on Lord Riddiford, Vandeek and in the ultra-competitive Stewards’ Cup on Aberama Gold confirmed how much we will miss his talents.

As for Frankie, his win on Kinross in the Lennox Stakes for Ralph Beckett, who deservedly collected his first Goodwood championship, was smoothly effected. Dettori made good use of the cutaway to pick up at the right moment on a horse who relishes the soft ground.

Even more so on this occasion, it seems. Ralph revealed after the race that Kinross had spent much of the previous 48 hours with his left fore in an ice bucket: ‘He trod on a stone. He’s got very, very thin soles and he feels every pinprick.’ Marc Chan’s versatile performer now faces contests in three countries in the near future over six furlongs, seven furlongs and a mile at Ascot, Longchamp and Santa Anita. Says Ralph: ‘He likes soft ground because he’s out of a Selkirk mare but over a mile he handles it quick. We’ll try to dance every dance again. He’s a gelding. That’s what he’s here for: he’s got to dance every dance.’

Port is fashionable once again

I once drank some excellent port at Ted Heath’s table. The invitation came as a surprise, but it almost certainly had nothing to do with the monstre (un)sacré. The dinner took place during a Bournemouth party conference at the Close in Salisbury. Ted had an unofficial PPS, a then Tory MP called Robert Hughes. Rob had a sense of fun and mischief. There would have been little scope for either while he was enduring the sullen maunderings of the Incredible Sulk. Anyway, he was given a chance to amuse himself when asked to organise a dinner party. He included me.

This would not have been Ted’s choice. I had never been polite about him in print, nor to him in person. But he was at one disadvantage. As I was not a head of state or even a head of government, I was hardly an interlocuteur valable for le grand épicier. Although he knew perfectly well who I was, he was not prepared to admit it.

That said, he started the evening with a boundary at my expense. We were admiring the stuff on his walls. There was a photograph of him with the governor of Lee Ho Fook province or some such. It was of great significance because he was prominent. 

Next to it was a delicious Gwen John portrait and I complimented him. ‘That is indeed superb, Ted.’ (He would no doubt have preferred a more honorific mode of address but sod that.) He saw his chance. ‘Ye-es. Those who know about these things saythat it is a fine example of her work.’ Four runs to Heath.

Dinner ensued; pretty good, as I recall, with some decent claret. But the high point was the port, clearly from a serious year. I thought I would risk embarrassment. ‘This is a very fine port you are giving us. Is it a ’55, opening up to full maturity? Or could it be a ’63, replete with promise?’ Ted’s only reply was ‘glass of port’. Maybe I was right – I suspect that it was the ’55 – or perhaps whoever did the buttling just produced some port without the host knowing or caring. That seems unlikely. Ted enjoyed his creature comforts and it is hard to believe that he would have been un-aware of what he was drinking.

He might have wished that he had followed up the Gwen John crack with a borrowing from Wilfred Rhodes, the great Yorkshire bowler who could have joined Ted in an all-time curmudgeon’s eleven. He once dismissed an Oxbridge captain. After the match, the undergraduate congratulated the master. ‘That was a very good ball, Mr Rhodes.’ ‘Aye. It were too good for thee.’

Apropos port, including the tawny variety, there is bad news. Those who market the nectar are managing to increase sales. Hitherto, port has been the prerogative of Oxbridge colleges, Inns of Court, livery companies, London clubs, the odd great house and similar establishments where chaps know what is good for them. The only concession to modernity is that these days, the ladies are not always obliged to retire when the decanters circulate.

Now the young are being encouraged to drink port and even mix it. Doing that to vintage port ought to be a criminal offence, on a par with putting soda in malt whisky. Because of the marketing men, supplies are decreasing. Most of the ’77 port has now been drunk: an outstanding vintage which could have benefited from enhanced longevity. This also means, inevitably, that prices are rising. Not many years ago, in Lisbon, I drank a bottle of 60-year-old tawny for €35. Those were the days.

All that said, summer is not yet over. In the course of the weekend, I drank a lot of Luberon Blanc from the Famille Perrin. The Perrins know how to make wine. Does the English climate still know how to make summer? Let us hope.

Diane Abbott deletes foul-mouthed migrant tweet

Is Diane Abbott OK? A day after the independent MP hit out at Tory party deputy chairman Lee Anderson for his foul-mouthed comment about migrants, Abbott has again waded into the subject. This time, however, it is Abbott who is guilty of using a rude word:

Abbott subsequently deleted the tweet, which was a reference to 41 migrants tragically losing their lives in a shipwreck off the coast of Italy. This isn’t the first time that Abbott appears to have failed to think carefully before she wrote something. The MP was suspended by Labour back in April after she suggested Jewish people had never been ‘subject to racism’. In a letter to the Observer, Abbott wrote:

‘It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice…But they are not all their lives subject to racism. In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus. In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships.’

Mr S thinks this latest tweet is not going to convince Labour leader Keir Starmer to allow Abbott back into the fold any time soon…

Tory deputy chair: Tories have failed on migration

Oh dear. It’s ‘Stop the Boats’ week in 10 Downing Street as the government tries to set the news agenda over the long summer recess. There were early signs of success as Suella Braverman’s pledge to target ‘crooked‘ immigration lawyers ran across various news outlets along with plans to crackdown on migrant traffickers in Turkey. However, the party is now in the news on boats for a reason that was not in the No. 10 media grid.

On Tuesday evening, deputy party chairman Lee Anderson discussed the topic with Nigel Farage on his GB News show. However, rather than adopt the government line of talking up the plan to stop the boats, Anderson turned on the government instead — stating that the Tories have ‘failed’ on this:

This is out of control, we are in power at the moment, I am the deputy chair of the Conservative party, we are in government and we have failed on this. There is no doubt about it… We have said we are going to fix it, it is a failure.

One for Labour’s election leaflets…