The usual suspect newspaper is having a go at cyclists again this morning.

Never mind 10% inflation, energy bills no-one can afford, food banks running out of food, water companies drowning in debt so they can pay massive dividends while pumping shit into our seas and rivers, and people pulling their own teeth out ­– and that last one is reportedly true and not just a handy metaphor for watching the Tory leadership contest.

No, the most important story of the day is that the government is muttering about cyclists being forced to have registration numbers, insurance and stick to speed limits “under a radical shake-up of road laws”.

Such moves win the approval of the solicitor Nick Freeman, who is quoted as saying: “This is something that needs to happen for everyone’s safety…”

Ah, yes, Mr Loophole, the man who makes everyone safe by getting misbehaving stars off motoring offences. Yes, let’s persecute cyclists while ensuring people wealthy enough to pay Mr Loophole can keeping driving after being caught breaking the rules.

And never mind that it is actual government policy, if that means a thing anymore, to “make cycling and walking the natural choices for shorter journeys”, according to the Department for Transport.

Meanwhile, the Department for Policies To Deflect From More Important Matters has come up with this latest anti-cycling suggestion.

Now let’s just admit that cyclists are not perfect. And I say this as a bicycle-pedalling, pavement-walking, car-driving man.

Here is a story. It is hot and I am waiting with other pedestrians for the lights to change at a busy junction in York. A cyclist on what we used to call a racing bike sweeps up the hill from the station, sees the red light before him, swerves over the road and on to the pavement millimetres from my shoulder, wings round the blind pavement corner and goes on his reckless way without a wobble.

A dangerous idiot, although his cycling skills were excellent. He was also riding topless, perhaps because his tattoos needed an airing. It is fair to say my own unadorned torso is always covered up, cycling or not, as no-one needs to see that. And when cycling I stop at traffic lights; most of us do.

In a snap opinion poll carried out within the confines of my own skull, 100% of those asked believed that the proportion of stupid cyclists exactly matches general levels of stupidity in the population. It’s just that society is much more forgiving of stupid motorists than of cyclists who behave in a similar fashion.

Still, at least having a go at cyclists makes a change from having a go at immigrants and trying to deport them to Rwanda while, as the FT reports, asking the High Court to keep secret documents that list “torture and killings” in that country.

THERE was a good story in the Yorkshire Post the other day, and not just that feature by someone or other about bar billiards in York. Kudos to political editor Chris Burn for his splash about how officials in Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries’s department put pressure on Channel 4 bosses to delete references in its annual report to still having a sustainable future as a publicly owned broadcaster.

After a Freedom of Information request, the Post saw email exchanges between the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and Channel 4. These revealed that the government sought ten changes to parts of the report that did not fit with the chosen narrative of flogging off the station – something no-one other than Ms Dorries seems to want to happen.

Two references by Channel 4’s chairman, Sir Ian Cheshire, to the station’s long-term sustainability were originally queried, with the comments: “Suggest remove the highlighted sentence: the Government has made its position clear on C4’s long-term sustainability.”

The report was ultimately published without these and other demanded edits. What this  illustrates yet again is that we have a confederacy of bullies for a government. Leaving Channel 4 alone is clearly the best option.

The culture-warring Tories pretend to be looking to secure Channel 4’s future while really wishing to punish the station for not being in the past slavish enough to Boris Johnson. You may remember him, although mostly he seems to be on holiday nowadays.

Over there Donald Trump fumes his crooked head off about the FBI searching his Mar-a-Lago home, apparently in search of documents he may have lost or tampered with in contravention of the Presidential Records Act.

Over here, on our small Trumpian island, the Daily Mail and other diehard supporters of Boris Johnson obsessively attack the Commons parliamentary privileges committee investigating the prime minister for having possibly deliberately misled parliament – which could constitute a contempt of parliament.

This is a “kangaroo court” according to the Mail and a “Boris witch-hunt’, even though the committee has a Tory majority.

Tories on that committee are damned as traitors by the Boris-besotted Mail – much in the way that judges were slammed as “Enemies of the people.”

Nadine Dorries, that mouth-frothing member of the Johnsonian cult, calls the investigation “the most egregious abuse of power witnessed in Westminster”.

All of this to subvert the usual rules and procedures to protect one deeply unseemly man.

Whether over there or over here, what this teaches us is that rule-bending leaders sell us their colourful non-conformity while seeking power, bend the rules when elected, then bend them again to cover up the pile of bent rules they leave behind.

Talking of which, I do hope you are keeping up with the twists and turns in the Tory leadership contest. As gruesome as it is interminable, this tussle involves two of Johnson’s Cabinet ministers, one still active in her role, squabbling over tax.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, that unstable nuclear reactor of ambition on wobbly legs, says she will cut taxes immediately.

Don’t go looking to these two for answers to our real problems – or, honestly, just don’t go at all…

Former chancellor Rishi Sunak, that shifty shapeshifter lifting right-wing memes from the culture wars drawer, says he will cut taxes later. Now or later, it matters little: tax cuts benefit the better off and do nothing to help low earners.

Don’t go looking to these two for answers to our real problems – or, honestly, just don’t go at all, as neither has anything to say to anyone beyond the tiny constituency of Tory members allowed to take part in the crazy gameshow that chooses the next prime minister.

Don’t go looking for answers to the NHS crisis or the planet overheating madly, as these issues don’t appeal to the cruddy cabal who decides. So, naturally, Truss and Sunak have nothing much to say here.

A recent YouGov poll of Tory party members indicated no inclination to help the NHS, with 67% of respondents saying the NHS “has enough funds already, and just needs to spend current funds more efficiently”.

Don’t go looking for answers to the energy crisis or the water crisis, both of which have their roots in a Thatcherite obsession with privatisation.

As that singer turned environmental campaigner, and all-round top person, Feargal Sharkey said on BBC breakfast: “What you are actually looking at is nothing to do with droughts, it’s decades of under-investment and mismanagement.”

To mix the utilities metaphor here, we are being gaslit over water. All those leaks, all those huge profits, all the payments to shareholders, all the shit being pumped into our rivers, all the chronic underinvestment in infrastructure – this isn’t our fault, it’s down to the way the privatised industry is run.

As for the frankly terrifying way our energy bills are rising, both candidates offer nothing substantial. And now we all lose our shirts for foolishly playing energy poker. Not that we had any choice; these are the free-market rules, and we’re not free to do anything about it.

The financial expert Martin Lewis made a shocking observation on the BBC Today programme this morning. He pointed out that the new energy cap will amount to 45% of the state pension, adding that if Sunak and Truss only offer tax cuts and abolishing the green levy on energy bills, “we’re going to leave millions destitute and in danger this winter”.

Back over there, Trump went into hyperbolic overdrive, saying: “Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before. They even broke into my safe!”

“Corrupt at a level not seen before…” – That’s certainly one way to write your own political obit. Over there and over here.

Watching the squash on TV at the Commonwealth Games stirred a few thoughts. The first one was, Oh, so that’s how you’re meant to play. The ball powers down the side wall and bounces off the back wall, and is hit again, and again. Thwacking hell, what a sight. The game was between James Willstrop (above) and Rory Stewart, who is ten years younger than the man they call the Marksman. Squash players like a nickname. Mine is the Man Who Always Melts Into A Pool Of Sweaty Despair. Willstrop wobbled but won in the end (only to be defeated by Joel Makin). At one point the commentator said: “The younger man is moving so well.” This raised an alternative commentary: “The 65-year-old is moving quite well for a man who woke up this morning with a stiff hip. He even managed a rally lasting almost a minute. But now he has dropped his racket on the floor and is staring at the wall, muttering. The 71-year-old has beaten him again.”

The thing is, I think I played Willstop once in Harrogate. This wasn’t due to squash prowess but for a feature. He was a young squash champion; I was a fortysomething bumbler about the court. I haven’t kept the cutting and can find no record online. If blurred memory serves, it was for a series called Have A Go. There was no cutting in the box of dusty newsprint dedicated to 25 or so years of column writing, and to newer magazine articles. Perhaps I should throw away all those words.

The Tory leadership contest continues as if it were a general election. It’s not; it’s a private poll of a small number of cruddy old Tories. Yesterday, Liz Truss, widely seen as the likely winner (and God help us all), had a bit of a wobble, a pleasing sight. That woman grabs right-wing policies like a breathless supermarket shopper given five minutes to fill her trolley for free. Off she goes, pulling items from the Woke aisle; now she’s plundering armfuls of Growing The Economy Cornflakes. Now she piles into the barmy offers, harvesting £8.8 billion of savings by saying she will cut the pay of civil servants and other government workers who live outside of London. Outrage follows, and even some Tories point out that this is hardly levelling up. A U-turn occurs, but not before Liz For Leader – Lizfer, for short – has complained of “wilful misrepresentation of our campaign…There will be no proposal taken forward on regional pay boards for civil servants or public sector workers.” Ah, and where did this “wilful misrepresentation” originate? In her own campaign press release sent to journalists that very morning. More please, that woman is getting away with blue murder.

Lizfer has the backing of the Daily Mail this morning. Presumably because one reckless blonde-haired egotist addicted to self-serving cakeism isn’t enough. The paper has this barmy line: “All political careers, Enoch Powell famously said, end in failure. Boris Johnson is a striking exception to that rule…” Have it your way, but his career has literally just ended in failure as he is being removed by his own MPs for being a total liability. Barmy Avenue, a suburban road that leads nowhere.

Thanks to the financial expert Paul Lewis for pointing this out on Twitter. The heft of the British Passport has declined. In 2010, it was ranked as the most powerful in the world by the Henley Passport Index, and we could visit more destinations without a visa than any other nationality. Now it’s 13th. It must be another of those “Brexit benefits”. Still, at least it’s blue, as you may notice while waiting in one of those queues.

The rise of the Lionesses shows things sometimes come right in the end. With seemingly indomitable spirit, this England women’s team has banished cruddy old prejudice.

Once the idea of women playing football at such a level would have been laughed out of court by the pot-bellied men who knew what was ‘right’.

Once the authorities, some perhaps pop-bellied men long distant from athleticism, decreed girls must be kept off the boys’ grass. Now footage of a Yorkshire girl dancing in her England strip as her England heroines beat Sweden goes viral, and the girl and her family are said to have been given tickets to the Women’s Euro 2022 final against Germany on Sunday.

Hurrah to all that. The dancing girl clip captured the general elation. And those of us who haven’t watched often were pleased to find that women’s football is more entertaining and spirited than the men’s game, and just more fun to watch.

Perhaps that happy virus could reach other aspects of life. We need some indomitable spirit to overcome the scabbed populism that infects politics.

Boris Johnson came draped in the ratty coat of populism, and now the gruesome contest to grab that garment from him has been reduced to a vicious yet dull squabble between two poor candidates who are each, in their way, to blame for the mess we are in.

Each outdoes the other in trying to win the approval of Margaret Thatcher’s ghost in a weird nodding-to-Miss Havisham routine. Each tries to wear her rotting old policies; each tries to prove to the Tory faithful that they are true to a Havisham no-one sensible should miss.

And that leaves us all trapped in Satis House, where the clocks were stopped by Thatcherism before being sold to the highest bidder.

The Tories rid themselves of Margaret Thatcher more than 30 years ago, and yet still they venerate the woman they defenestrated; still, they stand before her vengeful ghost.

The candidates call for tax cuts and a smaller state. And when right-wing people mention a smaller state, what they mean but don’t say is: you’re on your own, pal.

The size of state we have now can’t fund the NHS properly, or give schools the money they need, or run a transport system that isn’t in hock to shareholders or arrange for energy anyone can afford.

What’s going to be cut to pay for lower taxes? Rishi Sunak says he will cut taxes when the economy recovers; Liz Truss says she will borrow big and cut taxes now.

I don’t care who wins. Both are rotten choices and soon we will be governed by the fourth Conservative prime minister in 12 years, and the winner will have been chosen without troubling democracy by asking the rest of us.

Of course, Brexit was the ultimate act of scabby populism, sold to us on a raft of lies, and now revealed as a monumental act of self-harm. Yet none of the Brexit faithful will admit any failings, as Brexit has become a sort of religion, an evangelical sect that turns away all dissenters.

If scabbed populism needs removing, so too does the timidity of Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour Party. Sir Keir won’t discuss Brexit either, other than by saying he would do it better, whatever that means. He seems mesmerised by the Brexit lies, too timid to point out the obvious truth that it’s been a disaster.

And whenever you think Sir Keir might be getting somewhere, he indulges in avoidable acts of self-sabotage. Sacking a Labour frontbencher no-one had heard of for appearing on an RMT picket line and speaking out of turn diverted attention away from the government, and made Labour look chaotic and hopeless.

While Liz Truss indulges in 1970s cosplay, blaming the ‘union barons’, Sir Keir seems too embarrassed to admit his party has anything to do with unions.

All very disappointing as what matters is having a party, or a coalition of parties, or God just about anyone, who can prize off that crusted scab.

Populism can never deliver in the end, as it’s all about culture wars and exaggeration; about stirring up hostility and antipathy, about division and derision.

At least we can look forward to the football. Good luck to the Lionesses. And, more generally, good luck to us all. Looks like we’re going to need it.

“Sunny day snowflake Britain had a meltdown…” Daily Mail.

The front of today’s Daily Mail mixes the meteorological metaphors to show what sunburnt softies we all are nowadays.

Perhaps they are trying to cool us down by mentioning snowflakes; or maybe the editor is a climate-denying, Brexit-besotted barmpot who must have something new to whinge on about until time cracks apart at the weary stupidity of it all.

Funny, isn’t it, how many of those who helped pull the union flag-patterned woolly jumper over our eyes when selling us Brexit now try to do the same with climate change.

It strikes me that this line of thinking is mostly favoured by people who have left their heads out in the sunshine for too long. I’ve had beads of sweat that talk more sense.

An accompanying leader in the Mail criticises “apocalyptic climate change pundits” and the BBC, only to then say, “Of course we shouldn’t be complacent about intense heat…” When that’s exactly what they’re doing. Angry complacency is their thing, you see.

Yes, 1976 was hot in Britain and the heatwave lasted for two months. I was 20 and had a short holiday on a canal boat or on a boat in a canal. Not a narrowboat or anything. Just a boat big enough for two young men who kept cans of beer hanging over the side in a net.

It might have been the Macclesfield canal, or it might not. The boat belonged to a friend’s dad and progress was slow as the locks shut to save water, occasionally sabotaging our plans to moor up besides pubs. Sometimes we even had to walk to the pub, which shows how tough we were then.

Professor Hannah Cloke is a climate scientist at the University of Reading. That probably makes her woke in overheated Mail-land; it’s always overheated on that cruel continent and never mind the weather. On a fact-check report on the BBC website, Prof Cloke says: “1976 was indeed a heatwave and we have had heatwaves before, but the point is they’re happening more often and they’re becoming more intense.”

In the summer of 1976, the UK, France and a few other countries experienced a heatwave (as did that canal somewhere south of Manchester). Now many more countries are affected, with heatmaps from NASA suggesting the global climate has become much warmer since 1976.

The highest temperature in the UK then was 35.9C, whereas the temperature in York today as I foolishly tap sweaty fingers over the laptop is 40C, with another degree a possibility.

That is clearly much hotter, and should alarm us, unless you are a backwards-bending Daily Mail editor type such as Ted Verity. Or the real editor Paul Dacre, who is reportedly being lined up by Boris Johnson for a seat in the Lords, presumably for services to client journalism and the tireless writing of front-page press releases.

Life seen through a Mail lens is always braver and better in the past, whether in the Second World War or during that long summer of 1976.

With a dull clunk of predictability, that Mail leader ends by combining those favourite topics ­­– “What ever happened to keep calm and carry on?”

And guess what, proud fellow snowflakes, that wartime slogan was dreamed up by Britain’s wartime propaganda department – and was never seen by the public. Until it was rediscovered in 2001, after which it was revived to flog us anything you might care to mention, including misleading sinewy visions of the past.

A closing thought. We should all vote Green as they talk sense about climate change and the environment. Why so few of us do (me included) is a mystery that needs unravelling before life becomes even more uncomfortable.

The Conservative Party leadership contest reminds me of that Quentin Tarantino film, only now it’s called The Hateful Tory Eight. Count them – eight, and not one you’d trust to run a raffle, never mind a country.

It is only a week since Boris Johnson dragged his entitled arse into Downing Street to make that graceless and petulant resignation speech.

A bitter and self-pitying farewell (and he’s not even gone yet).

No recognition that it was all his own fault, no nod to the flaws in his character that brought him down.

Scratch that – let’s settle for fissures. Flaws doesn’t capture the deep inadequacies, the mendacity, the vanity, the egotism, the grandiloquent self-absorption, the apparent belief that no one knew better than him, alongside all that toadying to billionaires and oligarchs.

Johnson portrayed himself as the blameless victim brought down by the “relentless sledging” of his own side. Rewriting his own history in that sulky oration, he referred again to “his mandate” – as if his party, his MPs had nothing to do with it. A very Trumpian aversion to reality.

Anyway, he’s gone, or going. The worst prime minister this country has ever seen leaves behind the disastrous mess of his inglorious Brexit (hope you’re enjoying the “new golden age”). Yet even now his faithful newspapers, chiefly the Daily Mail, are recasting history to his shape, still manipulating the truth to burnish Boris.

Now we peer down from the cheap seats in the upper circle to watch the film. It’s weird this contest to choose the next Tory leader and prime minister. We have no say, for this is a private Tory matter, but one with horribly public consequences.

What a way to organise a country. Endless media coverage as if this was something we could affect, whereas the choice is whittled down by Tory MPs and the eventual decision lies with Conservative Party members in a postal vote. A tiny constituency, deciding for a party now in thrall, post-Johnson, to wealth and Brexit lies, and bearing little relation to the Conservative Party of old (and that was bad enough)

As for the contestants, anyone outside of the charmless Conservative circle will wonder what we’ve done to deserve this this shameless lot.

Only the other week, chief players in The Hateful Tory Eight were routinely sticking up for Boris Johnson, parroting untruths to shore up his lies, evasions and corruption. Now they pretend to shiny newness and difference, while Rishi Sunak pledges to fix the economy he oversaw until, oh, only last week.

Here’s who is standing at the time of writing:  Sunak, Suella Braverman, Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss, Tom Tugendhat, Nadhim Zahawi and Kemi Badenoch.

All seem to be keen on cutting taxes and waging culture wars. None mentions the NHS or climate change. Sunak seems to be the favourite, although Johnson and his allies are said to be plotting against the former chancellor in revenge for what they see as his betrayal.

He had a slick video produced “almost overnight” (that’s what his side are claiming). Whenever it was knocked together, it’s a slickly terrible video that introduces his appalling slogan, Ready For Rishi. And begins with the words: “Let me tell you a story…”

Or sell you a Tory, much the same thing. The story he wants to sell is about his grandmother, his modest roots, and overlooks his vast personal wealth, the even more bottomless wealth of his wife.

Nadhim Zahawi is another multi-millionaire and you do have to wonder how people so ridiculously wealthy can have any idea about the lives of ordinary people – or the struggles many have.

Braverman is weirdly unpleasant, loves the culture wars stuff, and only the other day told ITV News: “There are too many people in this country who are of working age, who are of good health, and who are choosing to rely on benefits.”

She said this without offering proof, without acknowledging that 40 per cent of those claiming Universal Credit are in work but in jobs so badly paid they need government support.

Another vile urban myth incanted like a bad spell.

Liz Truss, that second-rate Thatcher tribute act, has good odds. Even though only the other week, in an example of her grip on things, she was heard on television referring to the Irish Taoiseach as the “Irish Tea Sock”.

I can’t run through them all; too exhausting, too depressing.

Johnson may have resigned in disgrace, but the right-wing populism he summoned up will not go away. All the candidates, however much they may squabble, are chanting the same lines: raising taxes, fighting Brexit all over again, turning on the immigration claxon, sending migrants to Rwanda, while saying nothing about what will be cut to pay for those lower taxes.

The Hateful Eight had an original ending much more violent than the one that went out. What sort of an ending will The Hateful Tory Eight Have?

Today’s headlines, courtesy of Tomorrow’s Papers Today

So where are we up to in that shoddy political drama known round here as The Liar’s Progress? We’ll get to that new plot twist in a moment, but first let’s revisit those phantom hospitals.

According to last Sunday’s Observer, the government’s own official spending watchdog is launching an inquiry into Boris Johnson’s claim that 40 new hospitals will be built by 2030.

If you ask me, those hospitals always were pulled from the over-stuffed Gladstone bag of half-baked Johnsonian aspirations. As if to confirm such a suspicion, when it emerged that some of those ‘new’ hospitals were merely extensions or upgrades (or possibly a new porch/cycle shed), the government told health trusts they must refer to all improvements as a ‘new hospital’.

Weird, really, as a new hospital in your area is the sort of thing you might notice. Do they really think people are that gullible? Are we really that deep in lies?

The National Audit Office is said to fear that Johnson’s hospitals pledge “has been greatly oversold to the public”.

No shit! Over-selling is all Johnson knows.

He treats the country like one of his abandoned wives/mistresses/latest side helping of whatever he fancied at the time of grabbing. Over sell, tell one vainglorious whopper after another, hope no one remembers the promises – that’s always been his shameless song. Plot and back-stab for years to become prime minister, and hope no one notices how terrible he is at the job – that’s the refrain we are stuck with.

Everything about Johnson has been greatly oversold to the public, while his backing vocalists in the right-wing media have sung a dutiful chorus of “He got Brexit done”, “He levelled up the North”, “He beat Covid, do-whop, whoop-whoop”.

Now even the backing vocalists are tired of singing the same old song. Today’s national newspaper headlines about the resignation of Sajid Javid as health secretary and Rishi Sunak as chancellor are almost all unfriendly, suggesting there is only so much lying even the Johnson-enabling Mail and Telegraph can stomach.

The undoing of Johnson, if that is what we are seeing (fingers crossed and all that), was always going to be a lie. Or, to misquote his hero Churchill, “a lie, wrapped in a lie, inside another lie”.

In case you are finding it all too wearingly sordid, the scandal of the moment (others will surely be along soon) concerns Chris Pincher, the deputy chief whip who resigned amid accusations that he had drunkenly groped two men in the Carlton Club.

Although this was reportedly not the first time such allegations had been aired, Downing Street stuck to the line that when Johnson made the appointment, he was not aware of specific previous allegations about Pincher. They kept this up for a few days, until Simon McDonald, the former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, made public a letter in which he wrote that No 10 was simply not telling the truth.

This was quite the bombshell. All those ministers pushed out to say Johnson didn’t know about these allegations suddenly appeared stupid. None more sudden or stupid than Dominic Raab, who was on air attempting to defend Johnson when he was told about McDonald’s letter.

What does it feel like to be a Tory minister or MP cajoled into defending the indefensible in this manner? According to a quote in the Guardian, one MP confined to a colleague over the weekend: “I’m fucked if I’m ever doing that again.”

If that’s how his own side sees him, there is a smell of toast about Johnson now.

As for all those lies, what you must remember is that with Johnson there are grades of untruth, a bit like with sandpaper. And some are the thickest type, guaranteed to take the tip off your finger and send you to the nearest imaginary hospital.

Sherwood (BBC picture)

THERE aren’t many links between studying English Literature in the 1970s, the miners’ strike in 1984 and prevailing attitudes to the humanities in our universities, but here’s one.

After leaving Goldsmiths College, I worked on a local newspaper in south-east London. A good job for me, but finding it took longer than the six months our government now insists on.

A few years into the job, the miners’ strike happened. Our NUJ chapel extended a brotherly hand to members of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) with a meeting in a local pub.

Where the miners came from is lost to me now. Perhaps it was the small but militant coalfield in nearby Kent; also unknown to me now is what on earth the miners thought about meeting those earnest young journalists who wanted to hear about their struggle.

The memory was revived after watching Sherwood, the BBC drama inspired by the miners’ strike and set in Nottinghamshire village dominated by the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers.

On one level, this is a crime drama. Alun Armstrong plays Gary Jackson, an NUM stalwart in a ‘scab’ village, to use the language of the day. When he is killed by an arrow from a bow, the bitterness of the long-ago dispute rises again. Gary was a pugnacious union bore who never let up about the strike or those who broke it, and many on the other side suffered his undying harangues.

The writer of Sherwood, James Graham, is too clever and interesting a writer to confine himself to a genre. Without wishing to give anything away, it’s safest to say that Sherwood is much better than the usual crime drama, even to those of us who love the usual crime dramas.

Sherwood is smartly written, brilliantly acted by a knockout cast (nearly every role going to a ‘name’), and the most compelling drama in years. It has a plot of many sides, not least the use of spy-cops who were suspected of having infiltrated mining communities so they could report back on union activities.

If Graham has a deeper thesis, it is that when politics divides us, we all lose. A timely thought as we contemplate the political bumper-car ride led by Boris Johnson, not so much a government as an endless, distracting self-protection racket, throwing out one stupid headline after another, with the aim of leaving us confused, worn out, and too tired to act.

James Graham then took to Twitter to complain about what he sees as the government’s assault on the humanities. A new policy insisting that arts graduates must find a good job within six months of leaving university is causing havoc in the humanities.

The latest example came with Sheffield Hallam University announcing it is to pull its English literature degree from next year, seemingly pushed in that direction by the government.

James said he would never have become a writer, would never have written Sherwood, if such a policy had been in place when he studied drama in Hull.

The writer Philip Pullman joined in, saying that the study of literature “should not be a luxury for a wealthy minority of spoilt and privileged aesthetes”. Yet here we are, with the arts becoming a minority sport, going the way of music and art in state schools.

I enjoyed studying literature and even read James Joyce’s Ulysses willingly again after leaving, so something stuck. A love of writing and words stayed with me, although in those days I could have gone into journalism without a degree, as many did, but that route has gone for would-be reporters. That is a shame and a loss, but so is insisting that arts students must find a good job in six months. Many won’t have found anything by then, or possibly their way out of the house.

You can’t measure the benefits of an arts degree with such an unfeeling ruler. While not many writers or artists become rich, their work offers great riches to society, and our arts economy is booming and respected around the world. According to the Arts Council, the arts and culture industry contributes £8.5bn to the UK economy. Shove that into your six months!

Anyway, as the writer John O’Farrell argued on Twitter, studying the use of language, the importance of story and character, and the power of words “is a profoundly civilised thing to offer young people that cannot be instantly measured by employment data. Literature expands the mind, opens up a world of imagination and possibilities…”

Although not when the cat walks over your laptop, writing the following…

y7u3-hq1we5sd3`1a5t4`1…

Chequers, minus £150,000 treehouse

Here is a conversation between the anti-Boris Johnson devil perched on one shoulder and the bored angel on the other.

Bored Angel: I see you’ve opened your laptop. Please don’t start writing about Boris Johnson again. You’re getting obsessed. Go and find something else to bang on about.

Anti-Boris Devil: But have you seen what he’s done now?

Bored Angel: No, but I’m sure you’re about to tell me.

Anti-Boris Devil: According to the Times, he asked a Tory donor to pay for a treehouse for his two-year son Wilf…

Bored Angel: What’s so bad about being a doting dad?

Anti-Boris Devil: It was at Chequers, which Johnson is only borrowing for as long as he is prime minister – and it would have cost £150,000. That’s nearly half the price of an average house in the UK. Millions of young people in this country can’t afford to buy a house, and he wanted to spend £150,000 on a treehouse for a two-year-old.

Bored Angel: Heavens, why did it cost so much?

Anti-Boris Devil: Well, it had bullet-proof glass for windows. Perhaps there was gold wallpaper, too.

Bored Angel: Sigh. OK, can I go and see if it was worth the money?

Anti-Boris Devil: No, you can’t, as the idea was vetoed by security services. And Downing Street sources have been quoted as saying Johnson was warned about the optics of spending so much on a treehouse.

Bored Angel: I really don’t need to know this, but who was lined up to pay for this treehouse?

Anti-Boris Devil: I am glad you asked. David Brownlow, life peer and the chap with deep pockets who coughed up for all the gold wallpaper and other expensive decorative fripperies Johnson and his wife inflicted on the Downing Street flat.

Bored Angel: Boris Johnson certainly knows how to annoy people like you. What else has he been up to?

Anti-Boris Devil: Well, he’s just told reporters in Rwanda, where he’s been hiding out at a Commonwealth summit after losing those two byelections, that he is “actively thinking about the third term and what could happen then”. Downing Street later said he was joking.

Bored Angel: I hate to ask this, but what does he want to do with a third term?

Anti-Boris Devil: Glad you asked. He says he wants to continue with his plans to reduce inequality across the country, all that levelling-up stuff he’s always trotting out without doing anything about it. After his party spent years levelling down the country with austerity before he came along and pretended none of that was anything do to with him. And it’s all a bit, well, rich as he belongs to a Cabinet of millionaires that is a sticky coagulation of privilege and right-wing nastiness.

Bored Angel: I hate to admit it, but “sticky coagulation of privilege and right-wing nastiness” is quite good. Think I’ll hop over and join you on that shoulder.

Anti-Boris Devil: Welcome to the proper shoulder.

Bored Angel: You mentioned a summit in Rwanda earlier.

Anti-Boris Devil: I did…

Bored Angel: Well, it occurs to me that Boris Johnson is the only person the home secretary has so far managed to send to Rwanda.

Anti-Boris Devil: Ha! Very good. I think you’re getting the hang of how things work on this shoulder.

Many things in life are too complicated to understand. Governments, particularly right-wing populist ones, like it that way.

Instead of acknowledging and explaining troublesome complications to voters, they make a distracting fuss and racket about something vaguely related to the (probably grubbily opportunistic) matter to hand.

When Boris Johnson’s government proposes abolishing the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA), it does so with a sticky bit of anti-European sentiment found at the back of the empty Brexit cupboard.

Of course, Brexit itself was a perfect example of complicated dressed up as simple: flogged to us as a matter of sovereignty (whatever that is), and battered in sentiment, alongside a vinegar sense of something lost, a weight of unspecified disgruntlement, all aimed at one target: the EU.

As we now see, there have been no advantages to Brexit at all, only disbenefits, but that won’t worry those who voted ‘yes’ with a passion. Proud foolish sentiment is not persuaded by economic fact or general sense; proud foolish sentiment has its own logic.

As a legal dunderhead, I cannot explain much about the government’s new Bill of Rights Bill, only to point out that honesty suggests it should be titled the Bill of Fewer Rights That You Had.  Oh, and doesn’t it raise an important question – what’s so wrong with human rights anyway?

Fortunately, there are people who know much more about this than a man sitting on a ledge, scratching his bald head. Among them is Mark Elliott, professor of public law at the University of Cambridge, often to be found talking sense on Twitter.

He has provided a detailed and, yes, quite long analysis of the Bill of Rights Bill, laying out what the government wants to do. It’s well worth a read and the link to his personal blog Public Law for Everyone is here:

https://publiclawforeveryone.com/2022/06/22/the-uks-new-bill-of-rights/

Professor Elliott points out that the HRA was introduced with the proclamation that it would ‘bring rights home’. It would do this by making UK courts follow rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights. And these rights “were at least in part inspired by the common law tradition and by the work of British lawyers”.

Now the government wants to trash this the HRA because, as Justice Secretary Dominic Raab has since dribbled in a newspaper article, the new Bill “will strengthen traditional UK rights” which are “under attack” from “stifling political correctness”.

Hatred of political correctness ­is another vague sentiment that cannot be satisfied or silenced, even if the thing itself is merely a handy dog-whistle.

Professor Elliott’s analysis can’t really be encapsulated in a short blog, but he ends by making some salient general points. Not least that the aim of the Bill seems to be to send human rights back to Strasbourg and replace them with reduced rights.

Behind it all lies a political party, shaped by its leader, that brooks no interference or obstacle, whether from the European Court of Human Rights or domestic courts, or anyone really.

This Bill has long been darkly mumbled about by this government, and its arrival now follows the legal intervention of the European Court of Human Rights in stopping migrants being deported to Rwanda.

And that deeply appalling policy is, of course, another dark distraction, introduced in the knowledge – and hope – that such legal interventions would occur, allowing Johnson and co to harrumph about Europe and Brexit all over again.

One worrying interpretation of this new Bill is that it aims is to place the government above the law. And sometimes the importance of human rights laws, and of the law itself, is to give citizens protection from governments, of whatever persuasion.

Changing laws for reasons of short-term political opportunism should worry us. And please do give Professor Elliott’s properly informed analysis a go. He knows a lot more about this than I do.