Rats in a Sack: Reform’s conference sounds like a grand old time

And how much does this Glastonbury of politics cost? You can get a basic ticket from £50 – but for just £1,000 you can get the full platinum experience. That’s tickets to the gala party, “preferred seating at key speeches”, a champagne breakfast with MPs, a photograph with Nigel Farage and, er, parking.

And presumably, an opportunity to vote on policies and the leadership going forward! Ah, no. Because Reform is not a party but an “entrepreneurial political start-up” and Farage, who owns the vast bulk of it, will keep that in his own hands thank you very much.

How’s it going for Clacton having voted for Nigel Farage as its MP?

On August 8, a huge fire hit the Jaywick area of the Reform leader’s new constituency, completely destroying the homes of two families, forcing them into temporary accommodation, and severely damaging several others. While the community rallied round – and one local councillor was on the scene within two minutes – Farage posted on Twitter/X later that day only that his “thoughts are with all of those affected by the awful fire” and that he would visit “in the coming days”.

That visit came a full four days later, following a period in which he was reported to be spotted in Brussels and gave an interview to US channel Fox News about free speech on social media. Eventually, on the Monday, Farage emerged to visit the local fire station, a visit Farage fanzine the Daily Express claimed “proved critics wrong”.

But even the Express couldn’t ignore the disquiet in the constituency over Farage’s lack of visibility since winning the seat six weeks ago. One local bakery owner told the paper locals had “not seen hide nor hair of him” since the election while another said: “I have emailed him on both his addresses four times about when he will hold a clinic in Clacton, I haven’t even received an automated reply.” If only there could have been some warning Farage might not be a conscientious constituency MP!

Then London mayor Boris Johnson refused to return from a family holiday in Canada the last time the capital was hit by rioting in 2011. While his spokesman at the time explained that “there is a growing desire from the media to see Boris Johnson back in London but the truth is that modern communications mean that he is just as in touch with the people leading this operation as he would be if he was sitting in his office”, his sister Rachel this week explained the real reason – the then Mrs Johnson wasn’t tall enough to reach the pedals of their car.

“It is my understanding that he was with his four children in an RV in the wilds of Canada or somewhere,” Rachel told her listeners on cabbies’ favourite LBC this week.

“One, he didn’t even have a mobile phone signal for 48 hours. Then the message got through, Tottenham’s on, you know, London’s burning, and he said ‘I’ve got to go back’. But the thing was that Marina, his ex-wife, is five foot two and her feet could not reach the pedals of the RV. He could not leave her with four children in the RV.”

That’s Boris all right – always putting his wives first!

To the Conservative Party’s online shop and, in particular, a £29.99 pop art print that would have Andy Warhol turning in his grave.

“Purchase this striking print featuring four of our most iconic leaders: Benjamin Disraeli, Winston Churchill, Rishi Sunak and Margaret Thatcher,” says the site in its description.

One of these things, as they used to sing in Sesame Street, is not like the others.

Sun political editor Harry Cole is a man of the people, in tune with the paper’s oft-cited “army of readers”. His concerns are their concerns – and that’s why he’s been venting on social media about the, er, lack of grouse on the menus of some of London’s most expensive restaurants.

“Not a single London restaurant appears to be able to pull off serving grouse tonight – ending a tradition that stretches back to the 1870s, the expansion of the railways and survived two world wars,” Carrie Johnson’s ex-squeeze vented on Twitter/X.

“Stalwarts like Wilton’s + Boisdale say ‘later in week’ – even Rules say ‘maybe tomorrow’. L’Escargot is closed on Mondays, but suggest tomorrow.”

It’s all Sun readers are talking about!

Liam Fox’s new book about the growing global water crisis is a disappointing 202,764th in Amazon’s best-seller list. But at least its title, The Coming Storm, is popular.

In September, Ebury will publish The Coming Storm, the book version of Gabriel Gatehouse’s popular BBC podcast about conspiracy theories, also called The Coming Storm. Meanwhile, author Greg Mosse is still promoting his April release The Coming Storm, sequel to his Sunday Times thriller of the year The Coming Darkness.

None are to be confused with The Coming Storm, a 2022 family drama set in Hitler’s Berlin by Amazon best-seller Eoin Dempsey or 2019 thriller The Coming Storm by international best-seller Nora Roberts, or indeed The Coming Storm, the 2018 audiobook by New York Times best-selling author Michael Lewis.

Or, er…

As politicians of all hues condemned Elon Musk for his ruminations on the UK, a country the X man-baby could almost certainly not locate on a map, in rode Dame Andrea Jenkyns, former Tory MP and three-month finger-flipping education minister.

“Don’t #BlockMusk,” she wrote on her hero’s social media platform. “Make @elonmusk British Prime Minister. He would sort our great country out for the better! And stop #TwoTierKeir #Musk4PM!”

“Andrea’s pissed again,” replied one user. “Is it any wonder people have lost faith in the Tories if Jenkyns is the best they could muster.”

To which Jenkyns, in what may be the first flicker of self-awareness in her time in politics, replied: “I don’t drink, I am like this naturally!”.

Short-lived deputy prime minister Thérèse Coffey is back in the news after it emerged that she had applied for what the Daily Telegraph described as “a senior Labour Treasury role” (i.e. a job in the civil service).

Coffey, best remembered for encouraging people to eat turnips during a Brexit-inspired vegetable shortage, applied for the role of UK director at the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development, a director-level role at the Treasury with a salary of £183,400. She was unsuccessful.

Existing civil servants may be breathing a sigh of relief. When appointed health secretary in 2022 Coffey immediately annoyed pretty much everybody with a memo, entitled ‘New secretary of state ways of working preferences’, setting out her English-usage preferences. As well as urging staff to flag up achievements “if we have done something good”, it outlawed policy-wonk jargon, double negatives and Oxford commas. Actually, your correspondent is on board with all of those…

Conservative MP Richard Holden is fuming the news of Coffey’s application was leaked to the Telegraph, posting on Twitter/X: “@theresecoffey has a wealth of experience including 5 years as a minister, followed by four years as a cabinet minister and was the DWP SofS during COVID – not a walk in the park in anyone’s book.”

It’s odd Holden is so committed to roles being given to the best-qualified person on the basis of a rigorous application process. The MP, who formerly represented North West Durham, found himself the candidate for Basildon and Billericay in Essex just before the general election as the local constituency association was handed a shortlist of one by the party’s central office. Ran by its chairman… one Richard Holden!

ENTIRELY NORMAL AND NOT IN ANY WAY COMPLETELY BARKING QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Without general, equal, and certain laws, Southport can become Sarajevo” – Daniel Hannan, Conservative peer and self-styled ‘Brain of Brexit’, Conservative Home

(Also, isn’t that a Coffey-baiting Oxford comma?)

With some regret, we must report that respected polling organisation Ipsos has polled the public as to which politicians they think fit the description of “brat” (an aesthetic and a way of life inspired by the popular musician Charli XCX, m’lud).

Given that the Guardian has defined the lifestyle as “dirty, hedonistic, happy and bra-less”, it is fitting that it is former prime minister Boris Johnson as the most brat, with 19% of the public believing he deserves the epithet.

But weirdly, in third place – behind Nigel Farage – is Keir Starmer, with 17% believing the current PM is having a summer defined in yet another Guardian piece about the phenomenon as “wild nights, zero belief in ramifications, feral vulnerability, cocaine, existential despair, bacchanalianism, ambivalence about motherhood, jealousy, bisexual chaos”. Starmer relaxes by cooking to 6Music.

6% say Green co-leader Carla Denyer is brat, which is surely at least 5% more than people have actually heard of her.

Finally, Richard Littlejohn has written his column again. The one-note Gorblimey merchant is thought to earn deep into six figures for his Daily Mail column, a sum even more notable for the fact that it is, at least one a month, about the same subject: working from home.

“Most civil servants won’t even report to the office more than a couple of days a week,” he ranted once again this week. “And under Labour, they will no longer be required to be present and correct, not even from Day One of their new job.”

Ring the Mail’s newsroom and ask to be put through to Littlejohn’s desk, however, and you’ll struggle. Because, as your correspondent has pointed out previously, the old bore has been phoning it in from his home in Florida for the best part of a quarter of a century.