Water Marks

A water shortage in Britain is almost comically absurd even before considering how wet this spring was. Opposition to the renationalisation of water, leading to the National Grid that was proposed in the Labour manifesto of 1979, is as ridiculous as support for the nationalisation of every corner shop. Massively in control of drought-stricken Kent, does Reform UK agree? If not, why not?

Reform has never repudiated the endorsement of Bonnie Blue, who has made her own singular contribution to the water debate, and its candidate at Makerfield was a Remain voter, as was its candidate at Gorton and Denton. This is starting to look like a pattern, or even a policy. Still, it does compel Remainers to claim as their own the desire to smell and lick the backside of Carol Vorderman. What a rare and welcome point of unity between them and Reform supporters, with Remain voters now the majority of people who still voted Conservative. To be so broadly appreciated, how fortunate is Ms Vorderman.

Facing Robert Kenyon is Restore Britain's Rebecca Shepherd, whose husband in a Dutch-Indonesian immigrant. Is a Muslim? At any rate, their business model is purely parastatal, consisting entirely of the provision of therapeutic equine activities to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Service of Wigan Council. To my mind, that is a noble pursuit. But would Restore voters agree? Would Rupert Lowe?

Restore has just given Reform control of Norfolk County Council after all, so how many local authorities have to be run by either or both of them before Andy Burnham reconsidered his Old New Labour fixation with regional devolution? Labour is also tied with Reform for a distant second place at Holyrood, where it has not governed in 19 years, and it is in a very distant third place in the Senedd. There have been seven elections to the London Mayoralty, and Labour has only ever won four of them, three with Sadiq Khan and the fourth with a man who, having already wiped the floor with Labour as an Independent, would have done so again. The Greens are highly likely to take it next time. Yet Burnham even wants to give councils responsibility for providing asylum accommodation, as if the relevant committees would still be made up of his dad's mates from the union and the Catenians.

If Burnham won Makerfield, though, then that would be a sign of the changing times. Palantir is still everywhere, which urgently needs to be addressed, and which would not be so by Burnham. But Peter Thiel himself has fled to Argentina, of course, and has had to go so far as to issue an official denial that he was abandoning his hopes of the Presidency in 2028. When you have to say it. And Reformers and Restorers alike, what do you think of Thiel's new host, Javier Milei? He thinks that the Falkland Islands are part of Argentina. As, presumably, does Thiel. So that as, presumably, does Vance.