Way of the World Michael Deacon

So should you throw a Christmas party, or shouldn’t you? No one seems sure. Least of all the Government. In the past few days, one minister has told us not to invite more than five people, another has told us not to kiss under the mistletoe, and a Government scientist has told us not to socialise “unnecessarily”. Yet a Downing Street spokesman has told us to proceed as normal.

Thankfully, in order to end the confusion and provide much-needed clarity, the Cabinet has now agreed the following guidance for the festive season.

1. Your Christmas party may go ahead, provided that it is adequately ventilated. Suitable venues include a wind tunnel or the Grand Canyon.

2. Kissing under the mistletoe should be done via Zoom.

3. Doing the conga is permitted, as long as everyone has a Scotch egg.

4. You are entitled to invite vulnerable elderly relatives round for Christmas lunch. For their own safety, however, they should be seated alone in the garden.

5. If possible, celebrate Christmas in Downing Street. It’s totally safe, no restrictions apply, and no one will find out what you got up to until a year later.

Something peculiar seems to have come over the Scottish nationalists. Until recently, they were ferociously proud of their nation’s bountiful reserves of oil. In the 1970s, they campaigned using the slogan, “It’s Scotland’s Oil”. In the 1980s, they indignantly accused the Westminster Tory government of blowing the proceeds from oil on tax cuts, instead of investing in a sovereign wealth fund like Norway’s. Then, during the referendum campaign of 2014, they promised voters that

North Sea oil would make an independent Scotland rich.

Lately, however, the nationalists appear to have had a dramatic change of heart. Now that they’ve become so ardently green, they seem embarrassed by, and possibly even ashamed of, their oil. At the recent Cop26 summit on climate change, Nicola Sturgeon vowed that Scotland would “accelerate away from fossil fuels”. The First Minister also made clear that she opposed plans to drill the Cambo oil field off the West coast of Shetland. Shell has now pulled out.

A few days ago, however, the nationalists’ anti-oil fervour reached a startling new pitch. At an SNP online conference, reports Glasgow’s Herald newspaper, an environmentally conscious party activist called on her colleagues to take a stand against all nations that produce oil. “Boycott countries that take more fossil fuels out of the ground,” she cried. “Don’t visit the countries, don’t buy their goods.”

A noble aim. Readers may, however, have identified a potential drawback. It would require Scottish nationalists to boycott Scotland.

This may sound like a tall order, but the nationalists’ determination should never be underestimated. It will be no surprise if, in the coming months, we see them urging Scots to shun Scottish businesses, avoid Scottish places of interest, refuse to accept Scottish banknotes, and possibly even leave Scotland altogether. At least until Scotland stops taking fossil fuels out of the ground.

On the other hand, there may be a simpler alternative. Even as we speak, some enterprising nationalist may be conducting research to prove that in fact the hated oil was never Scotland’s in the first place.

Personally, I suspect that Westminster put it there. It’s just the sort of thing it would do.

Is Liz Truss the new Margaret Thatcher? Ms Truss certainly seems to think so. On Tuesday the Foreign Secretary recreated the famous photo of Lady T on a tank. We can be sure she knew what she was doing. A former Tory minister believes that it was all part of Ms Truss’s cunning scheme to become PM. Apparently, she’s trying to impress Tory party members by “looking like Margaret Thatcher as much as possible”.

If true, it’s an interesting approach. Then again, if you want people to think you’re the next Thatcher, surely the last thing you should do is imitate her. Because Thatcher never imitated anyone. She was always entirely her own woman. Indeed, that was the core of her appeal. She didn’t go copying others in a desperate bid for popularity. On the contrary: she was popular because she didn’t try to be popular. So to be like her, you need to be different from her.

Still, you never know. Tory MPS might like the sound of a Thatcher tribute act. After all, they were happy to elect a Churchill tribute act.

At any rate, Ms Truss’s efforts are certainly gaining a lot of attention. I wonder whether poor old Sir Keir Starmer is taking note. Could he boost his popularity by imitating previous Labour prime ministers? Perhaps he could smoke a pipe, like Harold Wilson. Or grow a nice moustache, like Clement Attlee. Or propose a coalition with the Conservatives, like Ramsay Macdonald. The suggestion might appeal to the wider electorate, and I don’t suppose it would surprise many of his members.

As long as he doesn’t start hurling mobile phones at walls, like Gordon Brown is said to have done. This would be deeply unwise. In Mr Brown’s day, mobile phones were far cheaper than they are now. The latest iphone 13 Pro Max with one terabyte of storage costs over £1,500. Now that the Unite trade union is threatening to cut funding, the Labour Party’s finances are under quite enough strain as it is.