Rats in a Sack: Farage has put Clacton “on the world stage”, claims Farage

And the purpose of this costly trip? “To represent Clacton on the world stage.” Residents must be delighted!

Farage will be in the US again this weekend, for the Keep Arizona Free Summit, meaning it’s a moot point where he’s actually spent more of his time since being elected Clacton’s MP.

Reform’s big announcement this week of three defections to the party met with little fanfare given that the trio were members of Torfaen County Borough Council. But how long they will stay with the party is moot given that Torfaen is bonkers even by the standards of Welsh local democracy.

The three – Alan Slade, David Thomas and Jason O’Connell – “defected” to Reform from the Torfaen Independent Individuals, which was formed when it split from the Independent Group in 2022 for reasons far too convoluted to get into here. The Independent Group still exists and has issued a statement, having “received numerous enquiries from residents seeking clarity on our stance”, that they would remain independent. Neither group should be confused with the Torfaen Independent Group, which also sits on the council.

Add to that the fact that Thomas is a former Labour councillor who stood for the Brexit Party in 2019 and the chances of the three remaining bedecked in turquoise by the end of the year seems unlikely…

Speaking of Wales, GB News picked up on a silly season story in the Daily Telegraph claiming that “decolonisation training experts” in the nation had been telling librarians to stop holding meetings in “racist buildings”.

The channel, like the newspaper, approvingly quoted “education expert” Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, who obligingly told its viewers how “the air turned blue in our household” when she heard the news.

Alas, time restrictions – the interview clocked in at just three-and-a-half minutes – meant that they were unable to point out that, rather than an independent academic, Cuthbert was, like so many of the channel’s contributors, a former candidate for the Brexit Party. The same restrictions which meant the Telegraph couldn’t find room for it in its 762 words, presumably.

“Food for thought,” posted Reform MP Lee Anderson on Twitter/X this week above a montage of the films Steptoe & Son Ride Again, Porridge, Carry On Cowboy and Rising Damp.

“Can you imagine being sat in a room watching one of these brilliant comedies with a Labour politician or one of these boring left wing commentators? Now that itself would be worth watching.”

Quite what had prompted Anderson to focus, apropos of apparently nothing, on film adaptations of 1970s TV sitcoms is unclear, but perhaps he needs to reappraise them. Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, who wrote Steptoe, were “both committed socialists, left-wingers”, Galton told the Independent in 1995, while Frances de la Tour, who played Miss Jones in Rising Damp, belonged to the Workers’ Revolutionary Party and Don Warrington, who played Philip, said the show “held up a mirror to the way we were living”. Porridge, meanwhile, has long been praised for its nuanced and humanising coverage of prison life.

Maybe he meant Love Thy Neighbour?

Another Reform figure to keep an eye on is Ben Habib, deputy leader until July when he was humiliatingly sacked by Farage to free up his job for Richard Tice, who was sacked by Farage to free up his job for himself.

Habib was unequivocal last week when asked if he was ditching the party, telling GB News: “I will not be defecting to the Tories.”

This week, however, he did the perfectly normal thing of formally endorsing a candidate for the leadership of a rival party, releasing a six-minute (!) video giving his backing to Priti Patel in the Conservative contest. That defection coming in 10, nine, eight…

Last week we reported how attendance at Reform’s forthcoming conference will cost up to £1,000. But attending the Tories’ shindig in Birmingham later this year is free – as long as you were a Conservative MP who lost their seat in July.

The £66 entrance fee will be waived for the 251 Tories who were defeated at the general election (despite departing MPs getting £17,300 to wind up their offices, double the previous amount). “We are committed to drawing on the expertise and talent in our party in helping us rebuild – and that includes our former MPs,” a party spokesperson told PoliticsHome.

And also, they could have added, a lovely opportunity for them to thank Rishi Sunak for his time in office personally!

Has one of those Conservative MPs booted out of Westminster last month – Jonathan Gullis – gone woke?

The braying former member for Stoke-on-Trent North – now running ground operations for Priti Patel’s leadership campaign – got married at the weekend to Nkita Weldon, a head of RE at a Midlands school. And apparently the catering was… vegan. Let’s hope there were none of those pesky avocados Gullis gets so worked up about!

Incidentally, Gullis could address the issue on his new show this week. He has signed up to host on Friday nights on Talk, the channel which used to be called TalkTV until it, er, stopped being on TV. That revolving door keeps whirring!

Asked at the Conservative leadership hustings in Yarm, North Yorkshire, the token ‘wacky’ question of which chocolate bar they would be and why, Patel opted for the dull Dairy Milk. It was Robert Jenrick who set tongues a-wagging with “certainly not a Flake” – widely perceived as a dig at Kemi Badenoch, who gave the event – the only one to be held in the north – a swerve to go on holiday.

Boris Johnson, meanwhile, is ensuring that the Conservative leadership election is all about him by releasing his memoir, Unleashed, on October 10, just over a week after the four candidates shortlisted by the parliamentary party have made their pitch to the party’s autumn conference.

Or, as the book has been nicknamed at publisher Harper Collins, Unsheathed…

Hip North London bike firm London Green Cycles is currently selling a swish cargo bike – an eBullitt STePS E6100, to be precise – on its website for a cool £5,450.

Described as “rarely used”, “with its powder-coated hardened aluminium frame, hydraulic disc brakes and premium components, the Bullitt is one of the toughest cargo bikes on the market,” goes the blurb. “Its slim cargo platform functions well in navigating narrow bicycle lanes and plays nicely when sharing the road with other road users.”

The only catch? It’s covered in branding for GB News.

The accompanying photo on the London Green Cycles website shows the bike may need a little cleaning before use. Its cargo platform is covered in a layer of dust, in which someone’s finger has helpfully etched a five-letter word that begins with C and ends with UNTS.

How’s Brexit going? Not great, if even the cricket bible Wisden is using it as an example of how not to do things.

In an article in its magazine this month, the venerable publication compares the Hundred, the divisive summer slogfest, to Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. “Even if the overall analogy is a touch overblown for a fledgling sporting event, it’s not a stretch to suggest that the same free-market forces that have been hard at work in shaping the latter too,” it says. “And given how well the political version is going, it’s probably wise for cricket to pay heed to the implications.”

And of Richard Gould, who as Surrey chief executive opposed the tournament but now runs the England and Wales Cricket Board, it says: “His prior criticism of the tournament is all the more pertinent now that he stands tasked, not unlike Theresa May before him, with delivering an outcome that he actively campaigned against.”

May, an ardent cricket fan, won’t like being reminded of that. Howzat!

Ukip, who, unaccountably, still exist, are dealing with the rise of Reform by lurching even further to the right.

“For some time, the party has been looking at ways in which it could differentiate itself from Reform who have based much of their policy positioning on ours,” chair Ben Walker says in an email to supporters. “Over the coming weeks, there will be changes made to the party’s website and manifesto to underpin our new radical direction.”

One of these is backing the rioters, or “disaffected and under-represented patriotic people”, as Ukip refers to them. Acting leader Nick Tenconi is “offering them a voice and a political home”, says Walker (Tenconi was spotted at a protest in Aldershot leading a chant of “invaders out” to the tune of L’Amours Toujours by Gigi D’Agostino, a 1999 Italian disco hit which has gained an unfortunate second act after being appropriated by fun-loving German Nazis).

And the party has also announced a new ‘lead spokesman’ – step forward Calvin Robinson, the video games journalist turned cosplay cleric and one of the few people considered too wacky for GB News!

Heresy at the Daily Mail where star columnist Nadine Dorries has challenged one of its core beliefs: that working from home is sending Britain to hell in a handcart.

With the paper decrying it a “Skiver’s Charter” and Richard Littlejohn being wheeled out every few weeks to rant on about it despite himself phoning it in from his Florida home for the past quarter of a century, the former culture secretary seems to have gone rogue.

“I love working from home,” she writes. “I have a bird table right outside my office window, and if I forget to top it up in the morning, the robin taps on my window to remind me, while the finches and the baby collared dove sit back and wait. It’s bird food for the soul.”

It’s political correctness gone mad!