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RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Oi Angie, pass the Duchy from the left-hand side...

May. 10, 2021
RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Oi Angie, pass the Duchy from the left-hand side...

Breaking news: Woman you've never heard of is reshuffled out of a job you didn't know she had, then promoted into another job you didn't realise existed.

That appears to be the sum of the story obsessing the Boys In The Bubble yesterday in the wake of last week's elections.

Aside from the tiresome Wee Burney circus north of the border, of course.

Max Headroom obviously decided that his deputy, a bovver-booted teenybopper called Angela Rayner, should carry the can for Labour's humiliation.

But since he couldn't sack her altogether because his number two is directly elected by the membership, he stripped her of her role as party chairman and campaign co-ordinator.

When Rayner's supporters on the Left kicked off in anger, he 'promoted' her to the exalted position of Shadow Chancellor of The Duchy of Lancaster. The handful of people who may vaguely have heard of the Duchy of Lancaster probably think it's something to do with Prince Charles's organic food range.

Maybe Angie Baby has been put in charge of the biscuits for Shadow Cabinet meetings.

Pass the Duchy from the left- hand side!

Frankly, who cares what happens to Rayner, a coarse class-warrior best known, if at all, for shouting 'scum' at the Tories in the Commons and taking the knee alongside Starmer in supplication to the Black Lives Matter mob.

That she is considered to be indispensable by Labour's dominant Leftist faction tells you all you need to know about the quality of the talent in Her Majesty's Official Opposition.

Looking down the gallery of nonentities caught up in the reshuffle, the only one I recognised was Nick Brown, an old trades union bruiser I used to see propping up the bar at conferences. That was back when Labour still mattered, before the intolerant metro-wokerati turned it into an irrelevant, identity obsessed student protest movement which holds the decent people it pretends to represent in utter contempt.

Naturally, there have been recriminations after last week's dismal performance, but I simply fail to understand why so much airtime and newsprint has been devoted to this self-indulgent navel gazing.

In what sane universe is a rearrangement of the deckchairs by the leader of a party which has just hit an iceberg, and is holed below the waterline, considered by radio and TV news editors to be the most important thing that has happened in the world all weekend?

At least Wee Burney is trying to precipitate a genuine constitutional crisis, though to be honest most of us — in England, at least — are heartily sick of the sight and sound of her.

Quite why the broadcasters feel they must subject those of us outside Scotland to every cough and spit from this ghastly Toytown monomaniac is beyond me.

From what I can gather, outside of the SNP ultras and their media muppets, nobody in Scotland has any great appetite for another divisive indyref slanging match, either.

Can't we just enjoy a period of silence from the political class? Since Covid reared its ugly head 15 months ago, we've had politicians in our faces 24/7.

Now that the pandemic is effectively over, can't they just give it a rest for five minutes.

The country's opening up, people are going back to their offices, we'll soon be free to cast off our masks and sit inside pubs and restaurants, and travel abroad, as the last restrictions are lifted in time for the summer holidays.

So why not just let us get on and enjoy it?

Fat chance. They're already gearing up for a by-election in Batley and Spen, following the election of Tracy Brabin as West Yorkshire mayor. (Those brownies she was handing out obviously did the trick.)

And Boris is planning to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, so he can capitalise on his recent spectacular success and call an early General Election in 2023.

As Brenda from Bristol might say: 'Not another one!'

That means that from the beginning of next year, the parties will be on a war footing.

Since the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, there's been no escape. We've had the Brexit vote, three General Elections and numerous local elections.

It wouldn't be so bad if the politicians accepted the outcomes. But we had to suffer three years of Remainers trying every dirty trick in the book to overturn the Brexit vote. In Scotland, the SNP has never accepted the 55-45 'once in a generation' result in favour of staying in the UK.

Wee Burney is again cranking up confrontation designed to force a second referendum.

On top of that, just as we are about to cry freedom from Covid, and are finally preparing to escape the daily haranguing from ministers and scientists, we can look forward to another General Election just over the horizon.

The depressing prospect of wall-to-wall politics stretches out in front of us, with no end in sight.

So, for now, it shouldn't be too much to ask for a bit of a rest from the political class, at least until Parliament resumes properly after the summer recess.

If they must pick the fluff out of the navel of a woman you've never heard of being moved to a job you didn't know existed, let them do it in front of somebody who actually gives a damn.

Ever since he fitted a new front door a fortnight ago, Peter Finnon, from Sunderland, gets an unwanted 5am alarm call every day.

A seagull has taken a shine to the door and pecks away at the letterbox, waking Peter, his wife Rachael and two young children.

It reminded me of staying in a seafront hotel in gale-lashed Blackpool back in the 1980s. A colleague came down to breakfast looking frazzled, complaining that he hadn't slept a wink all night.

He'd gone to bed after the bar closed, only to be woken by a tap-tap-tapping on the window.

He looked out to see an 8ft-tall yellow duck staring back at him. The following morning, he opened the curtains to discover the duck still there. It was one of the town's famous illuminations which had been blown off a gantry by the high winds and landed on his balcony, where it was buffeted back and forth against his window.

Over breakfast, he recounted ringing the night porter at about 2am. The conversation went something like this . . .

'Hello? There's a giant duck trying to get into my bedroom.'

'Of course there is, sir.'

'No, I'm serious. There really is a big yellow duck banging on my window.'

'Have we been drinking, sir?'

'Er . . .'

'Goodnight, sir.'

Even though I didn't vote last week, it wouldn't have made much difference. We Londoners are lumbered with Genghis Khan as mayor for another three years. Conservative Shaun Bailey ran him closer than expected, though.

Perhaps if the Tories (especially Boris) had put more effort into London, Khan could have been toppled. Genghis says he is prepared to 'build bridges' to heal divisions. I wouldn't hold your breath. He hasn't even been able to fix Hammersmith Bridge.

He's also launching a £7 million 'Let's Do London' campaign to attract holidaymakers to shops, theatres and galleries. The mayor might have his work cut out. Khan's London was on full display in Selfridges, in Oxford Street, at the weekend. A man was stabbed in a fight between two gangs.

Under Khan, the streets are more dangerous and London is in the grip of a knife crime epidemic. A full-scale gang fight in Selfridges isn't the ideal advert for encouraging tourists. Never mind 'Let's Do London'. He should adapt the famous Neapolitan slogan:

See London and Die.

Crazy golf, crazy guy

During his 27-year marriage, Microsoft boss Bill Gates, currently in the throes of divorce from his wife Melinda, was allowed one weekend a year with an old flame. He says they spent their time 'playing putt-putt' — what the Americans call crazy golf — and 'discussing biotechnology'.

That last phrase could soon enter the lexicon of love.

Private Eye magazine adopted 'Discussing Uganda' as a euphemism for extra-curricular rumpy-pumpy after a female journalist who disappeared upstairs with an African diplomat at an embassy drinks reception claimed later that they had been 'discussing Ugandan affairs'.

This may now have to be updated for the internet age. I suppose a discussion about biotechnology is out of the question.


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