I HAVE seen the departure of a few prime ministers, starting in 1990 with Margaret Thatcher, aka Mrs Hacksaw in my old newspaper column.

Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak followed. Now Sir Keir Starmer is going too. His fall resembles one of those speeded-up films of decay, the solid flesh of majority rotting before your eyes.

That win nearly two years ago turned round Labour’s worst defeat since 1935 – an impressive achievement that soon enough impressed no-one much.

History will wonder where it all went wrong for Sir Keir, and so will I over the next few paragraphs.

Let’s start at the end. Starmer’s farewell speech, delivered with staccato grace, was heartfelt, brief, and a little odd. Then again, Starmer’s decline is itself a little odd.

Exactly why he ended up facing such hostility remains a mystery. He has done nothing wrong and leaves untouched by scandal or corruption; he didn’t crash the economy overnight, like Truss. He was diligent and hard-working, unlike Johnson. He threw himself into the job, at great cost to his family.

In the end, and in simple language, people didn’t seem to like him. Or that was the message put out so often it became its own truth. Unpopular opinion: he deserved better, but it’s too late to worry about that now.

Many on the left and the right wanted Starmer to fail from the off. As did the usual suspect newspapers, determined to swing a wrecking ball at whatever Starmer did, hoping to crack the foundations. Then the broadcasters gave that ball another push, led by the BBC’s frightful political editor, Chris Mason. And a right-wing media agenda was established as fact.

If Andy Burnham does grab the battered crown, he will face the same media hostility. He will also endure huge pressure on social media, where fake news bots zip about like malevolent ping-pong balls. He will also suffer outrageous interference from the American far right, who seem so keen on mucking up our politics.

And he will soon enough be reminded that everybody hates politicians nowadays, a troubling virus for which there is no known vaccination.

Naturally enough, the causes of Starmer’s decline also lie in the man himself. Yes, he made mistakes, from a hasty decision to axe winter fuel payments, to pushing for the poisonous Peter Mandelson to be Britain’s US ambassador.

But it was more than that, different than that. He seemed unwilling or unable to tell a story, to give his politics plot and meaning, to communicate what he stood for. Politics may be a duplicitous art, but you need a good story, a clear narrative to weave.

Once in government, Starmer opted for a steady-as-she goes style, quietly undoing the mess made by his Tory predecessors. He saw himself as a manager politician who had time, two terms were mentioned, to reshape the country.

Sadly, he never truly found a way to connect with voters, to speak in his own voice. He did not wish to play the game, but politics is a sort of game. And politicians, if you’ll permit a generalisation, are sometimes a bunch of divas and drama queens, running about in an egotistical flap, headless chickens to a man and woman.

That applies to all parties, but it certainly applies to Labour MPs at present, so easily led into a chaos that suits their opponents.

Starmer should have taken proper control. Instead he kept his head down. By the time he looked up, the scree beneath his feet was moving, and there was only one way to go.

Will Andy Burnham and his king of the north act really pep up Labour’s chances? There’s an alarming degree of faith being put in what people are calling his Manchesterism, named after his spell as Mayor of Manchester.

Some say Burnham will be better placed to see off Nigel Farage. Maybe, but don’t rest too much faith on that altar. Farage, as any fool could have predicted, is now banging on about having a general election. Risky from a man leading a party that struggles to win byelections.

Yes, Farage needs to be contained. But sometimes the best person to do that is Nigel Farage. For Nigel nearly always undoes whatever it is Nigel is trying to do. He just can’t help hitting that self-destruct button.

REFORM MP Lee Anderson likes to share pictures of his breakfast on social media. Often a full English awash with proper English fat. Fitting for a man who resembles a sausage squeezed into a suit.

Anderson usually goes for the Culture War Full English special to bolster his fatty patriotism.

This raises questions. Does he like a full English because of the name or because it’s basically his party’s manifesto? In future will we all have to post pictures of our fry-ups just to keep our passports? Will my bowl of porridge see me banished?

Whatever, last week Anderston posted a picture of the bread accompanying his bacon. This set him off on one – “Lad behind the counter tried serving it on some fancy artisan sourdough. Proper British white sliced only, mate. None of that hipster nonsense.”

Of the responses Anderson received, many leavened with language, this was perhaps the most satisfying – “Sourdough is very tasty. Lee Anderson is a f****** moron. Both statements are true.”

According to the Cambridge dictionary, a hipster is “someone who is aware of and influenced by the most recent ideas and fashions”.

Whereas Lee Anderson is influenced by a greasy nostalgia that sits like lard on soggy toast. And why did he cite white-sliced bread? Perhaps, er, simply because of its whiteness. His party does seem to be anxious about everything white.

I like the occasional full English as much as the next heart attack survivor who’s been advised not to eat too many. Not being a patriotic dunderhead, I also like a continental breakfast, especially if a good baguette cuddles up with apricot jam and unsalted butter. And if I had a soul, I might well sell it for an almond croissant.

But as a fully indentured bread bore and home baker, I also know that white sliced bread is made with low-quality wheat, assorted additives, too much yeast, all mixed and baked quickly to produce squidgy slices of nothing.

Proper sourdough contains only water, flour and salt. That said, mine doesn’t always work out, so sometimes I add a pinch of yeast. This saves us from loaves you could use to build your own drystone wall.

Sourdough is just an old way of baking, raising bread without industrial yeast. Other techniques include saving a piece of dough from a yeasted loaf and using this to start the next batch, or getting things going with beer that’s live in the bottle.

Anderston could have pointed to other British bread, from split tin loaves to wholemeal, from the cottage loaf to Scottish baps. But no, he went straight for the lowest common denominator in the bread aisle.

If that last sentence sounds snobby, I’ll put up a floury hand by way of apology. Yes, white sliced bread will feed the family and that’s an important consideration, even if supermarkets sell it at unrealistically low prices.

If you can stretch to anything better, go to a local bakery. York is full of them, from the Haxby Bakehouse to Bluebird Bakery to CS Sourdough to the Black Wheat Club. All will sell you a fine sourdough loaf. Or something else good, and their shelves wobble with pastries and buns and other flaky delights.

Such bakeries can be found around the country, whether run by ‘hipsters’ or just by people who devote themselves to making the best bread possible. Britain today can be proud of its bread. You can even buy decent enough sourdough at the supermarket (alongside some horror story faux-dough loaves).

Good sourdough bread is made slowly and with care; it tastes lovely and is better for your digestive system than those gluey slices of processed bread wrapped in plastic.

If the pushing of white slice bread is mostly down to supermarkets, then Lee Anderson himself is the product a of a three-for-one deal at the politics supermarket. He’s gone from Labour to Conservative to Reform, all without adding anything healthy to his plate.

Footnote: white sliced bread is almost certainly not served at the long posh lunches Lee’s boss Nigel enjoys.

Emily Roots in her bakery (Picture Cornwall Live)

HERE’S another bread story, thankfully free of politics, that caught my eye. It appeared on the Cornwall Live website, complete with obligatory pun in the headline – “Mum knead-deep in homemade bread after Facebook post went bonkers.”

Emily Roots put out a light-hearted social media post in January 2024 when she was seven-months-pregnant. She said she was going to sell homemade loaves from the window of her Cornish cottage, even though she’d never baked a loaf in her life.

Locals in the small village of Tywardreath, near St Austell, were so keen on the idea, that the panic-stricken 31-year-old had to give herself a crash course in breadmaking.

Before long, hordes of locals bought loaves from an unassuming table covered by a gingham cloth. And now Emma runs the Village Bakery, and her loaves are found at the Eden Project.

“I’d never done sourdough and I was kind of intimidated by it, so I started with focaccia and the village went crazy for it. There were queues down the street,” Emma told Cornwall Live.

Just a word of warning, Emma. If you see a sleazy bloke in a bulging suit wanting bread for a fry-up, point him to the nearest supermarket.

Former prime minister Tony Blair (ITV News)

This is your pilot speaking. We are finishing our descent and will soon be landing at Manchester. While you’ve been away, all the usual shit has been going on.

You’ve not missed anything uplifting. Tony Blair has been doing his eerie messiah act, rattling his chains as the Ghost of Politics Past, while criticising Sir Keir Starmer and Labour, thus giving succour to the party’s critics.

Apparently, Blair wrote a 5,600-word essay for his own Institute for Global Change. I’ve not read it as I’m too busy flying this plane. You can come up with your own excuse, such as preferring to have a tooth extracted or something.

Anyway, Blair thinks Starmer should be sticking closer to the US and Donald Trump and made a mistake by not joining in with his Iran war. Be more like me, says the man nobody wants to listen to anymore.

And, yes, he said all that even as Trump rants and unravels before our bloodshot eyes, a sad sack of past sins. All while perverting politics to make himself ever richer. What a guy, Tony!

Heaving close to Trump gets you nowhere. Starmer went all out and still ended up being mocked. Flattery only insulates you for a while. Anyone too close to Trump eventually pays a heavy price . So good on Starmer for side-stepping the ill-fated Iran war.

Blair now exists in a weird bubble of the super-rich, carrying on like a priest who once found untold millions left in his collection plate.

The former prime minister also thinks we need to be doing more to develop AI. But he would say that as he receives enormous funding from, among others, Larry Ellison, AI evangelist, Trump backer, and third richest man in the world.

Will AI be our saviour? Everyone and his old dog wants to bet the house on it while knowing nothing much about how it will work – other than that it’s mostly in the hands of US tech bros who want to rule the world and almost do already.

One disreputable use of AI can be seen in all those pathetic self-glorying memes Trump shares night after night, portraying himself as a strongman, a superhero, Jesus and other mad images.

And social media is awash with AI slop. Fake news stories designed to undermine democracy and make us lose trust in everyone and everything.

Before the tyres bump onto the runway, and before you have to walk about two miles through the airport to find your car and then navigate all the midnight roadworks and a maze of sudden lane closures, there is just time to look out of the window.

Well done that pub. Picture from Threads

There you will see Reform leader Nigel Farage in a sulk about not having been invited onto Desert Islands Discs on Radio 4. The Mail says the Reform leader has been “banned” from appearing on the programme. According to the BBC, he hasn’t. Take your pick. It’s the BBC’s programme so it’s up to them who they invite.

One solution might be to ban all politicians and choose more interesting people. Sadly, it’s a bit late for that as assorted politicians have already gummed up the show, including Boris Johnson, Gordon Brown, Margaret Thatcher, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and Theresa May. More recently, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch appeared. What an impossible listen that was.

If Nigel Farage did wheedle his way onto that desert island, his luxury would be a bottomless bag of grievance. And his favourite piece of music would be a self-pitying whine sung to one note.

Oh, look, there he goes, stepping from his man-of-the-people private jet and into his working-class-hero limousine, surrounded by his common-touch security guys and expensive lawyers hired to preserve his everyday credentials, and to keep a lid on things he’d prefer you didn’t see or notice.

I hope you enjoyed your flight. Now you’re heading home and to a head full of all the usual sad nonsense about politics. It must be time for another holiday.

When Sir Keir Starmer won his impressive landslide victory, certain commentators took one look and started tutting like a builder called to inspect a hastily erected wall. ‘Nice and high,’ they said. ‘But who dug those foundations? It won’t last. Two sugars, please. And a Jammy Dodger for my friend Nigel.’

Those early purveyors of doom will be rubbing their hands after Labour’s disappointing showing at the local elections.

Before trudging through the troughs, let’s recall The League of Gentlemen, where a ‘local shop for local people’ was run by a woman called Tubbs, who fended off strangers wishing to make a purchase on the grounds that they were not local.

Local elections should be where local people vote on local issues. Reform UK, awash with money from Christopher Harborne, the biggest donor in British political history, took out front-page newspaper ads on election day declaring: “Vote Reform. Get Starmer Out.”

Whether those adverts made a difference would be hard to prove, but they do remind us that Reform UK is an opportunistic wiggler through loopholes. Did many Reform voters actually think their local vote might push Starmer out? Hard to say, but surely some did.

Incidentally, the diminished Observer rose in my estimation last Sunday for a front page about Harborne under the headline: “The man who bought Britain.”

More of that, please. And more investigations into the five million pounds Harborne gave Farage as a seemingly dodgy personal gift (as discussed in the previous MOL).

This morning Starmer gave another of his reset speeches. It was one of his best speeches. But will it make any difference? It’s an unpopular opinion, but I think Labour would be mad to depose Starmer. It would lead to instability for the country – and wouldn’t improve the chances of whoever Labour chose to succeed him.

On some levels, Starmer’s unpopularity seems unreasonable. Is he really worse than Boris Johnson, Theresa May or Liz Truss? He’s not an inspirational politician, it’s true – but is he that awful?

If he is forced out, Labour will look as hopelessly self-serving and panicky as the Tories were when they foisted three prime ministers on us in one year (a three-for-one offer no-one was queuing up to buy).

On the quiet much about life in Britain is improving as the damage done by the Tories is slowly repaired. Are we now such an unreasonable, ungovernable country that we have a massive sulk if everything isn’t perfect in less that two years? Perhaps we are.

This led me to thinking about stories and narratives. Politics is partly about having a story to tell and to sell. Some politicians are better at this than others.

Nigel Farage is a master storyteller, even if the tales he tells are full of lies, exaggerations, thinly disguised racism, blatant self-aggrandisement and impossible promises written on the back of a cigarette packet. His stories are not gripping yarns so much as griping yarns filled with hatred, spite and negativity (incapable as he is of saying anything nice about anyone, other than Donald Trump).

Starmer hardly ever tells a story, apart from the one about his father being a toolmaker. Without a story, or seemingly a coherent philosophy, he struggles to inspire voters. This was apparent soon after he was elected. Instead of brandishing his impressive majority, he tutted along and said, ‘Yes, the foundations do look questionable.’

That majority should have made him confident and full of political vim. He should have taken Reform UK on instead of trying to copy them; he should have been more ecological to deflect the reborn Greens. Instead he turned managerial and cautious.

Talking of storytelling, the media are demon writers of the Westminster soap opera. They workshopped this plotline ages ago, endlessly saying that the local elections were the latest or possibly last cliffhanger for Starmer. Did such coverage affect how people voted? A better storyteller than Starmer might have headed off those pesky scriptwriters. I’d like to think he still could, but I’m not putting money on it.

Despite all the pro-Reform coverage, Nigel Farage’s limited company (it’s not really a political party at all) now has about 5% of the country’s councillors, with Labour having 31%. Thanks to Alex Perkins, former Lib-Dem leader of Canterbury City Council, for the figures and pie chart, taken from Threads.

Yes, Reform has upended the old politics, but will the unbearable cockiness of Nigel Farage really take him to Downing Street? With all my old heart I hope not.

NIGEL Farage famously gets off scot-free. He is bowled soft questions and allowed to spout hate and division. He’s rude and sneery. And blows his top quicker than a dodgy fire hydrant if he is challenged.

I never said that he will say – even as footage is unearthed of him saying exactly whatever it was he didn’t say.

Mostly an interviewer will just hand the media broom onto the next journalist for the sweeping away of inconvenient dirt. Without asking Farage why he is being bankrolled by reclusive Thai-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, who gave his party £9m in August last year. And, as just reported, a ‘gift’ of £5m before the last election.

Never mind, he’s our next prime minister, the leader columns in the usual suspect newspapers will later opine (a stuffy old word favoured by leader writers, an odd breed).

If one-tenth of the time and energy devoted to attacking Sir Keir Starmer were to be spent truly examining Reform UK, how revealing that might be. Incidentally, and this is for another day, anyone who may replace Starmer will face exactly the same concerted and undiluted campaign of media hostility.

Anyway, here is an interview you won’t have seen or read, as it was made up by the writer of this blog…

Woman interview: Hello, Mr Farage. Welcome to the show.

Farage (trying to look interested while glancing at his watch): It’s my pleasure.

Interviewer: I’d like to start by asking why you did not reveal that you were given £5m by the crypto billionaire Christpher Harborne shortly before the general election in 2024.

Farage: Nobody’s business but mine. Next question.

Interviewer: You’ve not answered this one yet. At the time you said you were not interested in standing in the election or in staying in politics. Then you suddenly changed your mind after a very wealthy man gave you £5m.

Farage: It was to help with my security.

Interviewer: Was that because someone once threw a milkshake at you? Clearly guarding against airborne milkshakes must cost an awful lot of money.

Farage: Nice try, dearie. But you are just being flippant.

Interviewer: With respect, I am not. The public needs to know how much money you receive from donors. And, incidentally, £5m pounds is almost ten times as much as the average person in the UK will earn in a lifetime, according to the Office of National Statistics.

Farage: Well, more fool them. It’s a free market out there.

Interviewer: What, there’s a free market in people being given five million quid by rich men for no apparent reason?

Farage: Your questions are very tedious. I don’t have to sit here. I’m a busy man.

Interviewer: Busy promoting yourself, one might say. What qualities do you possess that are necessary in a prime minister? You’ve barely been an MP for ten minutes and you spend more time in the air than in your constituency. You’ve never been near a government ministry. Isn’t that unusual?

Farage: Far too busy for anything like that, dearie.

Interviewer: What, busy making a bothersome tit of yourself, first in the European Parliament, and more recently at Westminster, where you flounce out in during PMQs or organise a mini-sulk with your party’s MPs? And busy sucking up to extreme right-wingers in the US?

Farage (fidgeting with the microphone attached to the pinstriped lapel of his jacket): I don’t have to suffer your impertinence. Is it your time of the month or something, luvvie?

Interviewer: Now you’re being personal. But you still haven’t explained to me what are your qualities for being prime minister?

Farage (shrugging): Rich men like to give me money. And money makes the world go round. We need more rich people in this country.

Interviewer: Most people in this country are not rich. What are you going to do for them?

Farage: Fill a few potholes, run flags up lampposts, stop all this green nonsense, drill and frack until the last drops of oil have been sucked out of the earth, leave our children to sort out the mess. Stop wasting money on the NHS, prevent all those foreigners from coming here.

Interviewer: So all the usual grievance, hate, division and negativity, then.

Farage: Why change a winning formula.

Interviewer: One reason Britain faces so many problems is that your Brexit has been a disaster and is estimated to have cost the country between £180-£240 billion in lost revenue. Why should we believe a word you say?

Farage: Not my Brexit – it was Boris Johnson’s, and he didn’t do it properly. But Brexit did give us back our sovereignty.

Interviewer: Never quite sure what sovereignty means. Can you spend it down the shops? Now let’s move to the NHS. You have been very hostile about the NHS and suggested that we should have an American-style insurance system – yet in the US people sometimes have to sell their homes to pay their medical bills. Is that what you want for Britain?

Farage: The NHS under me will remain free at the point of delivery.

Interviewer: So it won’t cost you anything to enter hospital – you’ll just get a whopping bill as you leave. Is that what free at the point of delivery means?

Farage (exposing his Union Jack-covered ankles as he stands, while hoicking up his mustard-coloured corduroy trousers): I don’t have time for your woke whinging. I’ve gone a plane to catch.

Interviewer: Did you pay for your own ticket?

Farage: None of your business.

Interviewer: Don’t go yet. I want to know why you are up to your knees in money from oil, why you hate the planet so much, who exactly paid for your £850,000 home in Clacton, why the former leader of Reform UK in Wales was sentenced to ten years in prison after admitting taking bribes for pro-Russia interviews and speeches, why you keep making up stories about how awful life is in London, and why you won’t congratulate Labour for cutting down small boat crossings, why you are fighting the local elections on national issues, and why your party is now filling up with ex-Tories?

Nigel Farage storms out in the company of his elite crew of milkshake repelling bodyguards. The interviewer offers a wan smile to the camera.

“I guess we’ll never know,” she says. “Oh, damn. I forgot to ask him if Reform UK should really be called the I’m-Not-A-Racist-But party. Trouble is, most of them are.”

Time can make you swallow words once spoken with confidence.

I stuck up for the BBC as pro-Corbyn types complained the corporation had it in for their man Jeremy. All Labour leaders have a tough time in the media, I used to point out, annoyingly.

Still, that was true then and remains so today. Now Sir Keir Starmer is the one constantly berated by the newspapers and the TV news.

Perhaps unfashionably, I believe Starmer deserves a fairer hearing than he gets. No one at the BBC appears to share that belief. Almost all news about Starmer is framed negatively. While weaselly political editor Chris Mason insists on buttering up Nigel Farage. Sizzling him in more butter than to be found in a Lurpak TV advert.

Whatever you think of Starmer, and not liking or trusting him is perfectly fine if that’s your honest belief, surely only a deluded fool thinks Farage would make a better prime minister.

Farage has never done anything useful in politics; he hasn’t worked hard – or at all – as an MP to represent his constituents or to argue for change through debate. All he ever does is shout in the hope voters will mistake noise for nous. More fool them if they do.

Like his pal Trump, Farage appears to see politics as a self-enrichment scheme (‘Farage earns more than £1m a year for non-MP work’ – a rare BBC headline that came without the blandishment).

The Guardian has been my newspaper of choice for decades, especially on Saturday. How trying then to find it seems to have joined the Bash Starmer Street Kids of the Mail and the Telegraph, who have campaigned against him from day one.

Last Saturday’s edition was filled with Starmer’s difficulties over the fallout from his admittedly foolish appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador.

A column by the usually interesting Jonathan Freeland trundled out the standard anti-Starmer message, while an accompanying leader column could have been put in the Daily Mail with hardly a changed word. Even John Crace, saint of snark and my favourite political writer, has been at it.

Yet on Threads, my feed is full of people who support Starmer, especially over his refusal to join Trump’s misguided and illegal war against Iran. Many are also disgruntled with the Guardian.

Picture: From Jack Dart on Facebook

Yes, choosing Mandelson was a rotten idea. Yet all sorts congratulated Starmer at the time, not least Farage, the hypocrite’s hypocrite. He backed the appointment, calling Mandelson a “very intelligent man” and an “enormously talented bloke”, and offered to work with him on a Trump trade deal.

As soon as it all backfired, Farage whistled another tune. Probably one from the Great American Far-Right Songbook.

And yet in the photograph above, Farage is seen being matey with Mandelson – suggesting that politics is a closed world, filled with play-acting charlatans who chummy up to their enemies.

Will Mandelson be the end of SKS? I hope not as his government is achieving much good. Unemployment is down, the economy is growing, NHS waiting lists are down and 450,000 children have been lifted out of poverty (Farage would shove them back there). Oh, and Starmer has just promised to break the link between energy bills and the price of gas, surely a good move.

The Mandelson saga is one of those Westminster plotlines, obsessed over by key players in the soap, yet of little interest to most ordinary voters. But maybe I will have to swallow those words, too.

I AM in Knutsford for the day, taking my 94-year-old mother out for lunch. It is warm enough to sit outside. ‘Are you growing a beard?’ she asks, peering over the table through darkened lens.

‘It was your idea,’ I say.

She thought my sons looked good with beards and suggested I give it a try. So I did.

I remind her of this, and she says the beard looks good. Perhaps only a mother could say that. It is not exactly hirsute and might be taken by a passing wind or a sharp tongue.

At my boys grammar school in times of ancient history, one bearded teacher advised shaving the neck each week, something I now do. A younger teacher grew a beard to compensate for his departing hair. I recall quipping to a friend that he was making up below for what had gone up top. What a wit I was.

Some years later, my hair went the same way. And many more years on, I am attempting that upside down trick with a modest beard. A little like this blog, it is there but not everyone notices.

ON the return journey, traffic is awful. The M60 round Stockport is a semi-permanent traffic jam, as usual. Everything eases off on the M62 but soon signs warn the motorway is closed at junction 29 (the one for Leeds and York).

Google maps suggests joining a different traffic jam. Travelling alone, I am free to swear, which I do. It doesn’t improve my mood. Later I find out that a number of cars had crashed on the M62, some bursting into flames. The motorway remains shut for 12 hours and I feel guilty about the swearing.

Picture: Rafael Albaladejo (Pixabay)

MAKING marmalade is a simple, if sticky, pleasure. There’s shredding of peel to be done. Much as there is shredding of truth to be done when boiling up an anti-Labour story about marmalade and the EU.

I’ve been meaning to make another batch for a while. Other things keep getting in the way, including writing about not getting round to making marmalade.

Having once followed the traditional recipe, toiling over the pot in January after the bitter fruit arrives from Spain, I now buy a tin of prepared Seville oranges, to which water and sugar are added.

My version also contains whisky, as should all good things, including once a week the writer of these words.

What with everything going on in the world – and, no, I don’t wish to mention the marmalade-hued mad man-baby at the moment, as thinking about that irredeemably awful man too often is harmful to one’s health – you might have thought marmalade would be relegated to a tittle-tattle paragraph.

That would be to reckon without the mad right-wingers and their backers in the usual suspect newspapers. That crew like nothing more than bashing Keir Starmer while supposedly sticking up for great British traditions.

Yet marmalade, you will not be surprised to learn, originated elsewhere, with most sources pointing to the Portuguese word Marmelos, a quince paste popular long before marmalade became commercial in the late 18th century.

Personally, I wouldn’t recognise a quince if one hit me on the head. But I can spot a story heated up way beyond boiling point.

The BBC first gave this agglutinative pot a mischievous stir, reporting on its website that as part of a planned food deal with the EU, the UK was considering aligning with the bloc’s naming rules.

These allow all conserves to be marketed as marmalades – as long as the type of fruit is specified. For example, citrus-based conserves being labelled “citrus marmalade”.

Or orange marmalade being labelled as, er, orange marmalade, as it always has been.

Never mind that, there was a backlash to be lashed. Reform UK’s Richard Tice said: “Hands off our marmalade!”, possibly while having breakfast in Dubai, where he spends much of his time. For the Tories, Dame Priti Patel had a breakfast burp: “Labour is now attacking the great British marmalade!”

Warning: marmalade may also contain exclamation marks. And be sold to you by nuts.

So the people who flogged us the non-existent benefits of Brexit are now furious about marmalade. Except they’re not, not really. What they are cross about is almost nobody now thinks Brexit was a good idea. According to a recent YouGov poll, 56 per cent of voters believe Britain should not have voted to leave the EU.

All sensible people should surely now be happy to see stronger ties with Europe being reestablished. Whatever marmalade is called. Especially if it’s still being called marmalade.

With sticky-pawed predictability, the Daily Mail dragged Paddington Bear into the non-story about marmalade. While forgetting that the bear from Peru was a refugee who benefited from the kindness of strangers and stands as a symbol of humanity.

The author Michael Bond drew on his wartime memories of evacuees and refugees to create Paddington, saying: “We took in some Jewish children who often sat in front of the fire every evening, quietly crying because they had no idea what had happened to their parents, and neither did we at the time. It’s the reason why Paddington arrived with the label around his neck”.

So the story about marmalade was fake – and calling on the lover of marmalade sandwiches as a witness was typically shoddy.

As the ursine one himself has been heard to say: “Things are always happening to me. I’m that sort of bear.”

The Observer is my Sunday newspaper of choice. Decades ago, before the paper was owned and then ditched by The Guardian, I went into the office on a Saturday to do subbing shifts.

Other papers are fatter and fuller, but The Observer holds my loyalty, even though the paper betrayed its staff during the Guardian stitch-up sale to Tortoise Media.

Last Sunday’s front page buoyed my occasionally wavering fealty. It wasn’t the photograph of Nigel Farage and Donald Trump that did it, you’ll not be surprised to learn. It was the headline beneath: The unpopulists.

It is rare to read intelligent criticism of those awful men. And yet scrutiny is what they deserve.

Trump has tamed the US media through bullying, bribery and the fostering of naked partisanship.

In the UK Farage has seemingly struck a devilish pact with the media that lets him off scot-free. That common old phrase, by the way, means to “escape payment or punishment”. And, yeah, that’s how it seems to work with Farage, with the usual suspect newspapers parroting his every word, echoed by the Reform-friendly BBC.

Questions and criticism hardly ever arise – and when they do, Farage suddenly loses his cheery bloke persona and shows himself to be tetchy and thin-skinned. That man does not like sharp questions, especially from a smart woman journalist (witness his appalling treatment of ace interviewer Mishal Husain – “Listen love… you’re trying very hard”).

I honestly don’t understand this. I do not get it at all. It’s a head-meet-wall situation, and one that understandably gives me headaches.

But lately there have been stirrings, whispers on the wind, a flurry of hope raised by slippage in the polls.

Inside last Sunday’s Observer, an analysis piece by Sam Freedman carried another headline to cheer: Farage’s No 10 dream is fading as Reform pulls itself apart.

Towards the end of the report – a heartening read, by the way – Freedman reminds us that Reform UK relies “on a handful of donors who have to be kept happy, most notably Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based crypto billionaire who has given it £12m…”

The government has just announced emergency measures to overhaul such political donations.

According to a report in The Guardian on Wednesday, “Labour MPs are absolutely delighted that No 10 is at last bringing in changes that will hobble Reform’s ability to raise money from its Thailand-based mega-donor, Christopher Harborne, at the same time as making the electoral system fairer in the eyes of the public.”

Farage, naturally, has stamped his feet and threatened to sue. He also, as you may have heard, flounced out during PMQs, taking his MPs with him, like a petulant school bully pulling his gang behind.

All the new recommendations, including a ban on crypto donations and a cap on overseas donations, are aimed at reducing the risk of foreign interference in UK elections, and were suggested by an independent report from Philip Rycroft.

Sound and long overdue, as this excellent letter in the Metro argues (Julians are a fine tribe).

Farage wants to subvert everything to his own advantage – he has even been gifted his own TV station in the shape of GB News, basically a Reform UK TV station. This breaks all past behaviour and rules about politics and news, but Farage gets away with it.

We need to know who is giving money to our political parties. That way we have a chance of finding out what donors want. This is especially so at a time when the FT has reported that Trump’s State Department is building up a ‘slush fund’ to bankroll pro-MAGA groups in the UK and across Europe.

Reform UK solicits donations in cryptocurrency precisely because it’s easy to hide the origins of such money. For a man who bored on for years about sovereignty and the EU interfering in our way of life, Farage seems very relaxed when right-wing Americans and oil companies shove their spanners in our political works.

I really do hope that Farage and his on-off buddy Trump (relations have cooled, reportedly) are becoming The Unpopulists.

Trump’s popularity in the US seems to be slipping alarmingly (or very pleasingly), while Farage risks wearing everyone down, including himself, by constantly and boringly campaigning all the time. As a political song and dance routine, his act is remarkable for its longevity. But you have to remember that it’s an act, a cynical bit of fakery, a foot-shuffle to fool the people.

To close, I will repeat something I put up on Threads a while back:

“Farage says he wants to be PM but can’t even be arsed to be an MP.”

Surprisingly, that has now been viewed by 1,849 people. Quite an achievement for my low-flying account. And true, too, even if I say so myself.

“Hell is – other people!” is an infamous quote from Jean Paul Sartre, the French philosopher and novelist. Mind you, I think Sartre missed something there. The full quote should be: “Hell is – other people at the cinema!”

I am at City Screen in York to see Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. Cillian Murphy, star of the TV series, again plays Tommy Shelby in Steve Knight’s Brummie gangster saga.

It’s mid-afternoon and the previous screening is finishing. I wait with the River Ouse behind me. The cinema is where the newspaper was when I came to York in 1988, with the features department just down the corridor, next to leaky windows through which the wind blew.

I think about those days for a while. Then the audience starts to leave, seeming cheerful enough and chatty, a good omen perhaps. One of those departing says in a booming voice: “Well, I knew that…”

He spurts out a giant spoiler.

This is ironic as before the film starts, there is a short preface from Murphy asking us not to give any spoilers. Perhaps that man hadn’t been watching.

What he said can be filed under accidental verbal spillages. It’s what happens next that raises that Sartre quote, taken from a one-act play called No Exit that I cannot pretend to have seen. It features three characters newly arrived in hell who have to interact with each other.

Funnily enough, it is three characters newly arrived in the cinema who almost ruin this screening. The cinema is about a third full. During the adverts and trailers, there is talking from the three. Sadly, infuriatingly, they keep up the chat when the film starts. They appear to be drunk.

Various members of the audience make shooshing noises, one or two walk over and ask them to be quiet. Instead, they keep on talking, one loudly. A member of staff arrives and asks them to behave, but they take no notice. Some people, in hell or elsewhere, have unstoppable gobs.

This continues and a few people leave the auditorium in disgust. After a while, the film is stopped, leaving Tommy Shelby frozen on the screen. The lights go up and more cinema staff arrive. The disruptive crew are told they must leave. The woman, middle aged or probably older, shouts and complains. She has trouble standing and her slurred complaints can be heard as she stumbles up the stairs.

‘I’ll be wanting my money back,’ she grumbles, or words to that effect. The rest of us just want our film back. And that’s what we get, although the first ten or 15 minutes have been ruined.

On the way out, I ask if this happens often, and two members of say that it doesn’t, not really.

As for the film, it’s worth seeing if you’re a Peaky fan. Non-fans will find little to win them round, and strictly speaking the film did not need to be made, but it is made well. The tone is elegiac, the pacing almost slow, interrupted by outbursts of violent rumpus. Cillian Murphy is an older, sadder Shelby, hiding away in his crumbling mansion, writing his memoir, called The Immortal Man.

The Second World War is in explosive flow, causing Shelby to be haunted by images of his time in underground tunnels in the first war. His unravelling mind is peopled by the ghosts of loved ones, another sort of hell.

In Birmingham, his estranged son Duke (Barry Keoghan), now boss of the Peaky Blinders, is terrorising the streets of Small Heath. A bloodied reunion beckons when Tommy leaves his mansion.

The music is occasionally very loud, as is the Peaky way, but a sublime moment near the end is sustained by Hunting the Wren, a wraithlike tune from Lankum and Grian Chatten.

There is a prominent role for Tim Roth as a sneering Nazi-sympathiser who plots to engineer a German victory (only Tommy can stop him, naturally). This took me back.

A few years before moving to York, I worked in south east London on a newspaper now long gone, like so many others. Roth had one of his first stage roles in a play at the Albany Empire in Deptford. I was there with my pen and notepad. I’ve been there, on and off, although far less than once, ever since.

The name of the play escaped me for a while, then it came back. It was Happy Lies by CP Taylor.

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man can be seen on Netflix from Friday, hopefully without any disruption from drunk people in your front room. Unless you have rowdy visitors.

Should we believe this warlike headline in the Telegraph?

Sometimes, as in 1940, war is unavoidable. But to engage in war can also be a choice, a political decision, a whim even. And what war does is bring more war.

The first casualties of the Iran war are said to have been around 170 girls killed when a Tomahawk missile hit their school. Donald Trump mumbled a semi-coherent response to those deaths, saying the Iranians must be to blame as it was the sort of thing they did.

All kudos, then, to the US reporter Shawn McCreesh who asked the president: “You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war… but why are you the only person saying this?”

We need more reporters like that. Trump won’t answer or will spit out an insult. That’s if he can concentrate long enough. But such questions need asking.

We also need more leaders like Sir Keir Starmer. His lawyerly hesitancy might not tickle everyone’s political fancy, but it does put us at one remove from Trump and his unnecessary war against Iran.

A war illegal by most international definitions, apart from those written out in capital letters in Trump’s Big Book of Artful and Awful Lies.

The orange-hued man baby dislikes Starmer’s lawyerly caution , telling reporters that he was “no Winston Churchill” – that from a man with less gravitas than the Churchill dog in the TV adverts.

On the BBC website, Chris Mason twittered: “After Trump’s ‘no Churchill’ jibe can the special relationship recover?” Yet another of his attacks on Starmer. These are as frequent as his flabby puff pieces on Nigel Farage.

The Churchill of the Battle of Britain was heroic – far more so than Trump will ever be. For there is nothing heroic about his Iran war, a joint US/Israel enterprise with the equally morally dubious Benjamin Netanyahu.

To many on the British right, including Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and all the usual suspect newspapers, Starmer’s unwillingness to instantly do Trump’s bidding was a national disgrace.

Tony Blair, that spectre of ill-advised wars past, looking these days almost like his own ghost, chipped in too, chiding Starmer for declining to take part in Trump’s war.

The Mail and the Telegraph in particular have frothed with disdain about Starmer. So much, so normal. Yet their front pages no longer fit the mood of the country.

True, even writing the words ‘mood of the country’ makes me uneasy. How do we determine that national disposition – and do we trust those asking the questions?

If you believe the pollster YouGov, 67% of Britons describe themselves as anti-Trump, while only 24% of Reform UK voters do so. And 70% of Britons see Reform UK as pro-Trump.

So good on Starmer. It might, ironically, improve his popularity.

Nigel Farage, meanwhile, has been spinning like a weather vane, originally shouting that we should support Trump’s war, then changing his mind as opinion blows the other way.

Eventually people will see through Farage, the nation’s biggest sneak, always running off to the US to whisper poison about his own country. Always filling his pockets with money from abroad. And always blowing with the wind.

The FT reported that Farage went all the way to Mar-a-Lago to bend Trump’s miraculous ear about Starmer. In the event, Trump stayed away, leaving Farage to make his speech to a roomful of nonplussed diners who looked very bored as they waited to eat their over-done steaks.

Pete Hegseth (Picture: BBC)

Let’s close, shudders at the ready, with Pete Hegseth, the US Defence Secretary who insists on being called the Secretary of War. With a self-chosen job title like that, there is a man who loves a war, even if most of his battles have been as a presenter on Fox News, a sort of gruesome playschool for US government ministers.

Strutting into a press briefing on the Iran war, Hegseth bragged about raining “death and destruction from the sky all day long”.  With a smile, he said we were “punching them while they’re down,” and that’s “exactly how it should be.”

And then he quoted a Bible verse.

The above is borrowed from the vitally readable US commentator Heather Delaney Reese (do seek her out, she’s indefatigable). She said that Hegseth “weaponized Psalm 144”, saying: “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.”

Then he asked God for “total victory over those who seek to harm our military”.

Do we really want to rush in support of people like that?