Pothole Pros?

Trevor Phillips thinks that he is the Conscience of the Nation, yet his best man was Peter Mandelson, whose description of Jeffrey Epstein as his own “best pal” must have cut Phillips to the bone. Still, Zack Polanski had already sold out by apologising to Mark Rowley, so that is the end of him if you ever had a beginning of him. We told you so.

But at least Polanski did not cry off interrogation by the mighty Laura Kuenssberg. That was left to a man to whom she had never directed a difficult question, but who seems to have expected one this time. First Nigel Farage’s undeclared five million pounds, and now the JCB Pothole Pro, which is clearly a topnotch product from its use by councils of all colours, but which is namechecked on the election leaflets only of the party to which JCB had given £200,000. Welcome to scrutiny. And who knew that Reform UK was such a cheap date? Christopher Harborne must be kicking himself.

Farage could kick, if he could be bothered. There is ball at his feet, and here it is, Kemi Badenoch telling LBC that she was “born in a country that was 50 per cent Muslim”, even though her British citizenship depended on her having been born in the United Kingdom before her heroine, Margaret Thatcher, had abolished birthright citizenship. Badenoch also failed to mention that her Muslim grandmother had converted to Christianity. And even as, on the other side, the granddaughter of a Methodist minister, Badenoch claims to have taken part in Islamic Friday prayers, “because that was what happened there when I was in school.” Really? Like a lot of churchgoers in this country these days, I know Nigerian Christians, and again I ask, “Really?”