Ephraim Hardcastle
WHY is Nick Clegg MP agitating for a general election ‘shortly after the new Conservative leader is elected’? After all, he was largely responsible as deputy PM for the Fixedterm Parliaments Act limiting elections to every five years. His majority in his Sheffield Hallam constituency was 15,000-plus in 2010 but just over 2,000 in 2015. He might lose the seat next time. Better to get it over with now than hang around until 2020?
ENGLAND’S defeat means outgoing manager Roy Hodgson will likely fail to get a gong. Only three managers have achieved a knighthood – Sir Bobby Robson, who took England to the World Cup semi-finals in 1990, Sir Alf Ramsey, who led the 1966 winning team, and his predecessor, Sir Walter Winterbottom, whose team endured their previous worst defeat – 1-0 to US novices in 1950.
SURELY actress and model Donna Air, ejected from Celebrity MasterChef and mocked for appearing to modify her Geordie accent, deserves our sympathy. If boyfriend James Middleton marries Donna, both pictured, she’ll become almost royal. Her putative father-in-law, Michael, is likely to become an earl due to his daughter, Kate, being a future queen. So James will become a viscount and (if they marry) Donna a viscountess. So doesn’t the lass need to talk proper?
TONY Blair’s former house in Islington, North London, which he sold for £615,000 in 1997 (it was resold for £1.25m in 2001) sports a blue plaque saying the ex Labour PM lived there. It isn’t an official English Heritage sign. The plaque was put up by a firm which marks the homes of famous (or notorious) people, as well as dubious attractions in London such as the Big Brother TV house where sleazy inmates were filmed copulating.
HOME Secretary Theresa May, currently touted as the most likely politician to scupper Boris Johnson’s leadership hopes, has enjoyed getting the better of her rival in the past. Last year she blocked the Metropolitan Police from using water cannon after Boris – then mayor – bought three second-hand crowd-dispersal machines from Germany to tackle rioters. Mrs May said the machines, costing almost £218,000, were unsafe. Boris responded by saying she was talking ‘absolute nonsense’. So, no love lost there!
HEALTH Secretary Jeremy Hunt, now ‘seriously considering’ running for the Tory leadership, is reminded by Radio 4’s Sarah Montague: ‘Quite recently you told us on this programme that your job as health secretary was your last big job.’ Hunt’s suave reply: ‘I said it “might” be my last big job, and things change in politics very, very rapidly.’