Rats in a Sack: Trump lands the big endorsement – Kerry Katona

Penning her piece before President Biden withdrew from the race, the Celebs Go Dating, Celebs on the Farm and Celeb Cooking School alumna added: “I think he’s much better than Joe Biden – I could run America better than him”. Alas, strict rules stating candidates must have been born in the USA will deny Americans a Katona presidency.

The star then reached out, as they say, posting on Twitter/X: “Hey @realDonaldTrump. I’m flying over to come and give you some advice… you up for chat?”. At the time of writing Trump has yet to respond.

(Your correspondent did contact Atomic Kitten’s management to ask if the current line-up, Liz McClarnon and Natasha Hamilton, would be publicly endorsing a candidate but has yet to receive a response too.)

First-out-of-the-traps Conservative leadership hopeful and one-man argument against nominative determinism James Cleverly will hope members will not unearth an interview he gave to Radio 5 Live eight years ago when just a humble backbencher.

In it, Cleverly simply answered “yes” when asked whether he had watched online pornography or ever done drugs. “I had a little dabble with marijuana at university,” he said. And asked who should become Tory party leader when David Cameron stood down (quicker than anticipated, it emerged), he responded: “Me.”

Asked to play the game in which the participant is forced to say whether they would rather snog, marry or avoid someone, Cleverly said he would choose to snog Theresa May and Rita Ora, would marry Yvette Cooper and avoid the journalist turned Reform activist Isabel Oakeshott. The latter of which, to be fair, is the most sensible thing he has ever said.

Pity the Green Party who, after getting a record four MPs elected earlier this month, have found they now have an awkward membership base to deal with.

Co-leader Carla Denyer was this week forced to retract a statement on Twitter/X praising President Biden after a number of the party’s members went nuts. Denyer wished Biden well and thanked him “for his many years of public service”. Cue outrage from members who appear to believe the president is a child-murdering cheerleader for genocide. 

Adam Pugh, who finished second for the party in Lewisham North, said: “Carla doesn’t speak for me and she doesn’t speak for a huge chunk of the Green Party. This is a horrendously bad take.” Ellie Gomersall, a campaign manager and National columnist, meanwhile, posted: “I think not enabling genocide would be a truer sign of leadership tbh.”

Joe Lever, a Green councillor on the Isle of Wight responded: “We don’t need to say these things”. And Owen Jones, the former Labour campaigner whose public resignation from the party had such a massive electoral impact, wrote: “Joe Biden has armed and facilitated the mass slaughter of innocent people. I hope the Green Party co-leader reconsiders this tone deaf statement, retracts it, and agrees to meet with British Palestinians whose relatives have been butchered with US bombs.”

Denyer very quickly retracted the post and apologised. And presumably, and belatedly, realised massively expanding your base with Corbynite refugees from Labour is going to have a flipside…

Speaking of Owen Jones, the Mystic Meg of politics is already starting the new parliamentary term in fine form.

“Another bonus of last week’s elections is that the Labour leadership will now be too scared to purge left wing MPs,” he posed on Twitter/X earlier this month. “They’ll rightly fear they will win as independents, or defect to the ascendant Greens. Left wing MPs should use this to their advantage and be much more vocal.”

And, indeed, seven left wing MPs were vocal over the issue of child benefits this week, to the extent of voting against the government – and subsequently, er, losing the Labour whip for six months. Another triumph for the man who thought Russell Brand would swing the 2015 election!

Saddest tweet of the week comes from the ludicrously coiffed Tory Michael Fabricant, who posted: “Was thinking of a question I should ask in Parliament on behalf of #Lichfield then realised I can’t. It’s been 16 days.”

Fabricant lost his Lichfield seat in this month’s general election, with a 30.7% swing against him. Perhaps the people of #Lichfield had noted that Fabricant mostly spent his time in Parliament playing silly culture war games rather than battling for his constituency? One of his final contributions was to get angry about the Welsh Senedd removing GB News from its internal TV system – something presumably of vast importance to the people of the Staffordshire city.

What’s worse – the BBC or snowflake wokery? It’s a tough one for columnists at the Daily Express, who are being forced to pick a side by the Strictly Come Dancing furore.

For Beeb-hating columnist Carole Malone it’s an easy one – it’s a scandal of the Corporation’s own making which should see the hated licence fee scrapped immediately.

“Will anyone ever again be able to sit down on a Saturday night and watch Strictly with the same sense of wonder and excitement now that the glitter has come ricocheting off the Glitterball?” she fretted. “This supposed family show which has the nation glued to the telly every week is now looking like a grim, scary place where some women contestants are routinely abused, shouted at and, in one case, allegedly spat at and kicked.”

She added: “This sudden ‘concern’ is staggeringly hypocritical because the Corporation has known about some of these allegations for months.”

But wait! Here’s fellow columnist Ann Widdecombe with a very different take! “The Strictly saga continues with ever more silliness, with people going back to complaints that were settled years ago, egged on by Amanda Abbington who now claims that she is suffering from PTSD stemming from her time on the programme,” she wrote. “PTSD? After a dance show? Poor wee flower. After all, she is only 53.

“What has been happening on the TV dance programme is a microcosm of what has been happening in Britain generally: the loss of humour and the growth of snowflakery and victimhood.”

You pays your money for the world’s worst newpaper and you takes your choice!

GB News presenter Darren Grimes, meanwhile, has taken to present his increasingly hysterical anti-Islam YouTube rants (including this week repeating the lie that recent unrest in Leeds was Islamist-inspired) wearing a Newcastle United shirt.

Alas, even a hot-shot journalist like Grimes will occasionally miss some stories – like when, in 2021, Newcastle United was bought by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of the country’s absolute monarchy run along traditional Islamist lines. Still, no harm in turning a blind eye if they get you into the Champions League, eh?

“Blaming the Tories won’t work for ever” was the headline on an editorial in the Daily Mail this week, arguing that Labour had been in office long enough – at that point, two weeks and four days – to take responsibility for Britain’s ills. “Blaming the Tories for every disaster since the Flood to disguise their own lack of ideas won’t wash for long,” it fumed.

But Greg Hands, the former Conservative Party chair, used Liam Byrne’s infamous 2010 “no money” note at every opportunity right up until the end of last year, Photoshopping and firing off copies of the letter at every opportunity, whether as a Pret serviette or a giant novelty placard. So, using the Hands calculator, Labour is fine to blame the Tories until 2037!

Finally, more shenanigans over at Ukip, currently looking for its ninth permanent leader in eight years after Lois Perry stepped down for health reasons during the general election campaign. She had served 34 days in office.

Or at least Perry had said she’d stepped down for health reasons. This week she posted on Twitter/X that she’d be be discussing “my @UKIP leadership departure and alleged sexual exploitation by #Brexit millionaires and everything in between” on the now online-only (and considerably more unhinged) TalkTV this Thursday evening.

Perry’s beaten leadership opponent, Bill Etheridge, thinks that a game’s afoot. Refusing to accept Perry’s 77.4% win, he has told the right wing online Freeman Report: “I’m prepared to believe that a lot of people who aren’t actually active members must have voted, and all voted for Lois. I’m prepared to believe that. I believe, actually, that Father Christmas sometimes delivers my Christmas presents and that when kids lose a tooth, the tooth fairy puts a little penny under them.”

Put it to him by host James Freeman that “it looks like Farage and Lee Anderson have managed to convince Lois that Ukip don’t stand a chance and so she should collapse the party and put the party into disarray, right before the general election”, Etheridge responded: “What an interesting theory. I couldn’t possibly comment on that theory other than to say I find it fascinating.”

Only one more sleep until Thursday night!