BO-JOKES: PM’S BEST RIB-TICKLERS
ON JEREMY CORBYN: ‘We finally sent the corduroyed communist cosmonaut into orbit where he belongs.’
ON MICHAEL GOVE DANCING: ‘We sent top government representatives to our sweatiest boites de nuit to show that anyone could dance perfectly safely, and wasn’t he brilliant, my friends? Let’s hear it for Jon Bon Govey: living proof that we, you all, represent the most jiving, hip, happening and generally funkapolitan party in the world.’
ON HIS COVID BRUSH WITH DEATH:
‘Amid the rubble of brick they seemed to be digging a hole for something or indeed someone – possibly me.’
ON LEVELLING UP: ‘What monkey glands are they applying in Ribble Valley, what royal jelly are they eating that they live seven years longer than the people of Blackpool only 33 miles away?’
ON LABOUR: ‘In Islington – I kid you not, I have seen it with my own eyes – they like kids to run races where nobody actually wins and... I don’t believe that is a good preparation for life. Let alone for the Olympic Games.’
ON LABOUR’S ANSWER TO COUNTY LINES: ‘To decriminalise hard drugs apparently, to let the gangsters off with a caution – an answer that is straight from the powder rooms of the north London dinner parties.’
ON CRIME: ‘Crime has been falling – and not just, by the way, because we took the precaution of locking up the public for much of the last 18 months.’
ON PET THEFT: ‘I read a learned article by some lawyer saying we should not bother about pet theft. Well, I say to Cruella de Vil QC – if you can steal a dog or a cat then there is frankly no limit to your depravity.’
ON INSULATE BRITAIN: ‘I don’t call them legitimate protesters... and I am glad Priti is taking new powers to insulate them snugly in prison where they belong.’
ON BREXIT: ‘Is it not a sublime irony that even in French politics there is now a leading centre-Right politician calling for a referendum on the EU, who is now calling for
France to reprendre le controle? It’s good old Michel Barnier. That’s what happens if you spend a year trying to argue with Lord Frost – the greatest frost since the great frost of 1709.’
ON SNP WESTMINSTER LEADER IAN BLACKFORD: ‘For years [he] has been telling the Commons that he is nothing but a humble crofter on the Isle of Skye. Well now we have fibre optic broadband of [such] high quality that we can inspect the library – or is it perhaps the billiard room – of Ian Blackford’s croft.’
ON WILDLIFE: ‘Beavers that have not been seen on some rivers since Tudor times – massacred for their pelts – are now back and if that isn’t Conservatism, my friends, I don’t know what is. Build back beaver.’
ON SIR KEIR STARMER: ‘Like a seriously rattled bus conductor pushed this way and that by a Corbynista mob of Sellotapespectacled sans-culottes.’
ON SIR KEIR DURING PANDEMIC:
‘Captain Hindsight – attacking one week then rowing in behind when it seemed to be working. The human weathervane, the Starmer chameleon... if Columbus had listened to Captain Hindsight he’d be famous for having discovered Tenerife.’
ON LABOUR DURING COVID: ‘Flapping with all the conviction of a damp tea towel.’
ON BRITISH BEEF: ‘After decades of bewildering refusal we have persuaded the Americans to import prime British beef... build back burger, I say.’
ON AUKUS SUBMARINE ROW: ‘I know that there has been a certain raucous squawkus from the anti-Aukus caucus.’
ON WHY PEOPLE LOVE THE UK: ‘They love the groovy new architecture and the fashion and the music and the chance of meeting Michael [Gove] in the disco.’
ON THE OLYMPICS: ‘It is an incredible thing to come yet again in the top four. A formidable effort for a country that has only 0.8 per cent of the world’s population – in spite of the best efforts of some us, Jacob [Rees-Mogg].’