5 days ago
ANDREW PIERCE: Oh Kemi, you're getting too blue for the Commons
Keep an ear out for Kemi Badenoch 's fruity language at this week's PMQs. I hear Commons clerks are worried that the Tory leader is pushing the limits of acceptable parliamentary language.
Six weeks ago, she sent them into a spin after inelegantly accusing the PM of 'having no balls' over his woeful record on gender self-ID and protecting single-sex spaces.
Then, just ten days ago, the Tory leader followed it up by suggesting he and his policies were 'shafting the country'.
It's rare indeed for either the PM or the Leader of the Opposition to be brought up short by the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, during Commons exchanges. But Sir Lindsay will be guided by his bewigged officials before deciding whether to rebuke Badenoch if she pushes it too far again.
How long before she reduces Hansard, the official report of parliamentary proceedings, to using asterisks?
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie reveals that a new car is being released: 'Kia has announced a model that performs U-turns unaided – the Kia Starmer.'
Labour's bad D:Ream
A YouGov poll reveals Labour has recorded its lowest approval rating since the dreaded Jeremy Corbyn was leader. Under Sir Keir Starmer, the party's rating has fallen to 21 per cent. As D:Ream – and Labour – sang in 1997: 'Things can only get better.'
Jeremy Corbyn, an Arsenal supporter, has been lamenting the departure from the BBC of Match Of The Day presenter Gary Lineker. Lineker, said Corbyn, was a 'brilliant sportsman, an outstanding broadcaster and wonderful human being'. Presumably he's forgotten that, in 2017, Lineker tweeted pithily: 'Bin Corbyn.'
An outbreak of invasive honey fungus mushrooms has felled a birch tree on the Dorneywood estate, the grace-and-favour country retreat of Chancellor Rachel Reeves in Buckinghamshire. I'm sure it won't be long before Tory wags delight in referring to the Chancellor as 'dead wood'.
Lord (Michael) Farmer, a former Tory treasurer, had a clever riposte to Nigel Farage over the Reform leader's decision to support lifting the two-child benefit cap. 'Limiting the number of children the State will pay for is popular because working people sense it is fair and encourages responsibility,' said the hedge fund millionaire, who founded an academy school to help disadvantaged children. 'They are not willing to pay higher taxes to subsidise other families when they have already cut their own cloth to suit their income.' Quite.
Talking of Farage, there was a touch of genius about the choice of venue for his 'lift the cap' press conference last week. This was held in Whitehall's Royal Horseguards Hotel, in the same building as the National Liberal Club, the haunt of senior Lib Dems such as leader Sir Ed Davey. The sight of the Farage fox inside their hen house had Lib Dem activists spitting feathers, I hear.
Another fine mess, Sadiq
On the same day London Mayor Sadiq Khan caused predictable uproar by irresponsibly calling for the decriminalisation of cannabis, he discreetly raised the congestion charge in the capital by a swingeing 20 per cent to £18.
The move has been sparked by large numbers of drivers refusing to pay his hated Ultra Low Emission Zone fines. In February, the resulting shortfall was put at £438 million.
And they are not the only defaulters. The capital's foreign embassies, who argue that the Ulez charge is a tax and they are therefore not liable to pay it, 'owe' a further £143 million.
