PETERBOROUGH

Sunny Tory holiday

One fortunate Conservative can win a luxury holiday and £500 in spending money by entering the “Conservative Lottery” – a party money-spinner that brought in £2million last year. All proceeds go to the party, which promises to spend it on “protecting the new heartlands we won in 2019” and “supporting the campaigns and candidates working to unleash Britain’s potential”.

The winning ticket holder will be flown out to the Stella Island Luxury Resort and Spa on the north coast of Crete. It describes itself as an “ideal destination for couples in love and for the ones on their honeymoon”.

But CCHQ is missing a trick in not advertising the resort’s biggest attraction: its enviable location right next to the beach where Dominic Raab, above, enjoyed a sojourn at the same time as the Taliban rolled into Kabul last year. Let’s hope that the beach stays open for the lottery’s lucky winner.

An unlikely MP

As Prince Philip’s biographer, Gyles Brandreth, right, was no stranger to his penchant for straight-talking. At a special pre-jubilee lunch in the Duke of Edinburgh’s memory, the author and broadcaster revealed how the royal expressed “total and utter disbelief ” when Brandreth decided to run for Parliament in 1992, winning the seat of Chester.

He told guests at the event, in aid of Fields In Trust, of which the Duke was president, that Philip had replied: “But you don’t know the first thing about Westminster!” The very next day, the newly selected Tory candidate received an invitation to attend the State Opening of Parliament from the Duke’s private office. “My wife Michele and I sat in gold chairs,” he recalled. “It was wonderful.”

Animal rights row in Clubland

An animal rights row has kicked off in the heart of Clubland after a band of wildlife enthusiasts put a stop to an annual dinner for deer stalkers. The Capreolus Club, which hosts £1,000-apop shooting weekends, was planning to hold its event at Mark’s in Mayfair. Mark’s was established in the 1970s by Mark Birley and has been patronised by Posh and Becks, David and Samantha Cameron and Princess Michael of Kent, among others.

Members were outraged to hear Capreolus was promoting a dinner there online, and persuaded the club’s authorities to ban it. “As soon as it was brought to our attention that the event was being promoted as being hosted with us, we asked them to remove it from their website,” a spokesman for Mark’s told me. Now, all mention of the soirée on the website has been wiped. Curious!

Downing Street double agent

Boris Johnson’s allies in Parliament have been attempting to winkle out the names of rebel MPS, as the Tory party barrels towards a confidence vote on his leadership.

But word reaches me that the PM has had trouble closer to home, too. An employee in his private No10 office has defected to Labour.

The official now works for Sir Keir Starmer, and is dedicated to bringing down the Government they served just weeks ago. Peterborough can only imagine what intelligence they might have brought over with them.

Losing their marbles

Awkward scenes at the Oxford Union last month, where students debated whether to support repatriating “contested artefacts,” including the Elgin Marbles, below, held by the British Museum. Students heard arguments from Stephen Fry and Gary Vikan, former director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, and voted to return the marbles by a majority of 250-52.

Watching on was the union’s new communities officer, Liberty Osborne, who is presumably only too familiar with the controversy, given that her father George chairs the British Museum. Osborne Sr has long been opposed to repatriating his museum’s prized artefacts.

Will his daughter attempt to change his mind?

Special K

I am told of some rare common ground between the Tories and Labour. Kwasi Kwarteng and Sir Keir Starmer share the same nickname: Special K. Has the Business Secretary been given his moniker for earning the trust of the PM? For vital work reassuring industry during the pandemic? No. “It’s more to do with the cereal,” one insider reveals.